The business services industry includes a wide range of professional and support activities that enable a company to operate. This includes everything from IT service management to consulting, administrative services and shipping. It is one of the fastest growing industries, thanks to new technologies and globalization. Those who have a passion for helping other businesses can find their niche in this field. Many jobs in this industry require no more than a high school diploma or GED certificate. Others, such as IT support and consulting, can be performed from home or other remote locations.
The major characteristics of a business service are intangibility and participation. Because they don’t involve the production of a physical product, business services cannot be stored for later use. As a result, demand for a business service is typically immediate and must be satisfied immediately. In addition, the delivery of a business service requires involvement from the customer and must reflect their needs.
For example, an IT service might be a cloud infrastructure platform or a software service that allows an organization to manage its sales and marketing efforts. A consulting service might be an advisory role that helps a client develop and implement its business strategy. And a shipping service might provide value-added services that include labeling, packaging, warehousing and other supply chain functions.
Business services have a broad scope and are vital to companies of all sizes. They support the core activities of a business and help to create a competitive advantage. They can also provide a source of income or reduce costs by eliminating the need for an organization to invest in internal resources. For example, a company that doesn’t have the expertise in-house for shipping or storage can outsource these services and pay a fee to the third-party provider.
Another way that a company might leverage business services is by consolidating its back-office operations to achieve economies of scale and improve efficiency. For example, a large corporation might consolidate its human resource, finance and accounting, information technology and supply chain management departments into a single business unit to better serve the company’s customers.
A business services manager must be able to identify and monitor all of the components that comprise a specific business service. The manager must also be able to compare performance across different devices or locations. This can be done using a comprehensive, unified business service view, which allows the manager to identify and resolve issues more quickly. This view can be achieved using an IT operations management (ITOM) tool such as ScienceLogic. This tool automatically discovers and maps infrastructure and application topology, models business services and enables root cause analysis. It also integrates with third-party relationships and pulls in business KPIs to measure IT impact on business outcomes. It is a powerful solution for organizations that need to break down visibility gaps with a single business service view across a heterogeneous mix of clouds. ScienceLogic’s AI/ML-based IT platform enables business service managers to make the shift from device-centric to service-centric management.