Business services are the activities performed in support of a business’s overall trade activity. These include financial services, warehousing and marketing, among others. They do not always result in a tangible product, which is why they are sometimes referred to as “intangible” products.
Typically, business services provide value to other businesses and/or end customers. They help them accomplish their trade goals by reducing costs or generating more output. They may also provide assistance to society, such as in the case of social service organizations.
There are three major types of service businesses: business-to-business (B2B), social, and business-to-consumer. Each type of service company provides different services, ranging from technical to nontechnical.
B2B companies assist other businesses for a fixed or hourly rate. They may help their customers with various tasks such as marketing, production, and design. They can also provide a variety of other services, such as delivering goods and services and helping with the administration of the customer’s account or other business-related responsibilities.
Shared Services
The purpose of shared services is to consolidate and centralize the support functions that are needed by a business. These functions are often grouped into dedicated service delivery groups to lower costs through economies of scale and efficient service delivery.
For example, many businesses choose to combine their human resources and finance operations into one dedicated service organization to streamline these processes, improve performance, and reduce costs. This can help them to achieve efficiencies in areas such as employee onboarding, benefits administration, and payroll processing.
Examples of shared services can also include IT services and device services. A banking company for example might create several device services that monitor all of the devices it has throughout its global offices, including online banking, teller systems, and ATM networks.
IT services are similar to device services, except they monitor a set of IT infrastructure components instead of a single individual device. These include things like network and computer systems, databases, applications, and security.
A business can also use a business services provider to outsource specialized software applications. These providers offer an affordable way to acquire and use third-party software applications by leasing them over a network.
They also offer professional services, such as accounting, human resources, and legal services. They can also handle business process outsourcing, which involves hiring a firm to complete specific tasks that don’t fall within the capabilities of an in-house team.
The pricing of services is important for both the business and the customer. For the customer, they want to pay as little as possible for a service, but for the business, they need to make money on it so that they can continue to operate and expand.
Businesses need to determine a proper price for their services before they can begin offering them. This can be difficult to do, as they need to take into account the time and expertise that they will require in order to deliver a service. They may also have to consider the competition that exists in their industry when deciding on a price level.