Service Portfolio Management

The Service Portfolio details the commitments and investments made by a Service Provider to its customers and within the markets they service. It contains current contractual obligations, services under development and continuing service improvement programs.

The Portfolio represents all engaged resources and resources being released during the different phases of the Service Lifecycle. It includes the Service Pipeline that consists of services under development and the Service Catalog, which includes customer visible active services that have the potential to recover costs or earn profits for the Services provided.

Service Portfolio Management is a dynamic and ongoing process that covers the following stages in work practices:

• Define - list services, confirm business cases and verify portfolio data

• Analyze - maximize portfolio value, set priorities

• Approve - finalize portfolio proposal, authorize services and resources

• Charter - communicate decision and allocate resources.

The service management system includes ITIL certified Service Portfolio Management, with Service Pipeline and Service Catalog functionality, as part of the base product. Combining the Service Item Lifecycle stored in the embedded CMDB, with assigned Service Level Agreements and service Teams, the system enables organizations to manage their Service Offerings from strategy to design through to transition, operation and retirement.

Service Portfolio Management in the system allows organizations to create Service Categories that include business-related attributes, such as business processes supported, business owners and business users. This ensures organizations record all relevant information against the Service.

Organizations can further optimize their Service Portfolio Management by tracking and reporting on Service Offering and Service Component usage, Service Level performance and costs. This includes the functionality to calculate break-even points (B.E.P.) for offering a service, which allows support organizations to charge the appropriate cost for offering the service to their internal or external customers. This is achieved by recording of financial attributes against services, including service cost, service charges and service revenue.

The service management system SPM capability also allows organizations to easily record the technical aspects of services such as applications used, IT Owners, supporting services, dependent services, SLAs and OLAs, Contracts and Agreements by defining Relationship Maps.

Working with SPM

Using the SPM functionality, organizations can create and publish all Service Offerings throughout the Service Lifecycle, which include the phases of:

1. Services under development, that are being considered but are not yet released (Service Pipeline)

2. Services in production/operation, that would be included in the Service Catalog

3. Retired/discontinued Service Offerings.

Service Items are recorded against the different stages of the Lifecycle and easily accessed through the filter views, available within the Configuration>Items screen:

Consistent with the Lifecycle model used for all Configuration Items (CIs) throughout the application, Service CIs are created using the Service Category template, with  a series of Lifecycle States customized to represent the different phases a CI can transition through (i.e., inception, design, implementation, operation or retirement phases).

Within each State of the Service Lifecycle, the relevant Users included in the Service Portfolio Team can be assigned, allowing them to manage Service Item information when the Item is allocated the State.

Using the SPM Functionality

The following outlines how the SPM Team define, analyze, authorize and charter a Service Offering in the system. This is achieved as a Supervisor User with Configuration and Service Level Management privileges enabled.

To begin:

1. Create the Service Portfolio Team in the Service > Teams tab,  and assign all the relevant Users
   Then within the Group tab, create the work and management groups associated with the Service Lifecycle and assign the relevant Users. (See: SPM Teams.)

2. Within the Configuration>Categories Tab, edit the existing Service Category
   Duplicate and edit an existing Service Category or click New, to create a new Service Category. (See: Categories.)

3. In Edit mode, click the Service Category option and assign the Service Portfolio Team
   Set field labels for the Item, including any relevant business related attributes. Save and move to the Lifecycle tab.

4. Edit the default Lifecycle, to include all the applicable States defined by the SPM Team
   Some example States include requirements, defined, analyzed, approved, chartered, designed, developed, built, test, released, operational, retired. (See: Categories Lifecycle.)

5.  Within each stage of the Lifecycle define the following State options:

   	Description
   Status
   Name	Enter the name of the Lifecycle State.
   Active State	Stipulates if the Item is Active, when assigned this State.
   Offline State	Only visible when Active is set to No. Indicates if the Item is offline and inactive. Items moved into states where this is enabled, have availability metrics calculated.
   Pre-production State	Only visible for Service Category lifecycle states. Items that use this state are available within the Service Pipeline filter view of the Configuration>Items tab.
   Entry Point	An Entry Point is used to indicate the start of a Lifecycle. To make the state a Workflow Entry Point, select the Entry Point checkbox. As the Entry Point is the first state, the Previous States field will be removed.
   Exit Point	Select whether the state will be an Exit Point. An Exit Point is used to indicate the end of a Lifecycle.
   Service Team Group	Assign a Group within the associated Service Portfolio Team, to allow these Users to edit the Item details when it is assigned this stage of the Category Lifecycle.

6. Continue to configure the Category like any other Category and Save

7. Within the Configuration > Types tab, create an Item Type using the Service Category (See: Item Types.)

8. Assign one or more SLAs
   
   Multiple SLAs can be associated with the Type template as it allows the User to calculate the service costs for all Items that apply the Type template but that may need to be associated with different SLAs.

9. Move to the Costs tab and complete known details
   
   Within the Costs tab, organizations can calculate the Break-Even Point (BEP) of a Service based on forecasting the number of Customers of that Service. This enables the organization to account for the per calendar month price of the Service, which is used to calculate the ongoing revenue figures within the Item Costs tab that uses the Service Type template.
   
   

   Forecast Costs
   Capital	Enter the proposed  total cost to be invested in the Service.
   Recovery	Complete the field with the expected number of years designated to recover the costs of implementing the Service.
   Recurring	Enter the proposed  ongoing cost, on a per calendar month basis, for offering the Service.
   Services	Using the details entered in the Costs fields and the cost per annum of the SLA, enter the forecast number of Customers/Users to calculate the break even point (B.E.P) of the Service. Using the auto-calculated  B.E.P., enter a  per calendar month Price for the Service to recover costs. This figure is used in the Service Item Costs tab to calculate the ongoing Revenue figures.
   Actual  Costs
   Capital	Content for this field is derived from the Cost field within then Costs tab of  the Item created using this Type.
   Recurring	Content for this field is derived from the Monthly Cost field within the Costs tab of  the Item created using this Type.

10. Create the Item and assign the relevant State, which in turn associates the relevant Users included in the SPM Team.
    Assign the Users and/or Org Units to set the number of affected Users, and set the appropriate SLA.
    
    The Costs tab of a Service Item includes information related to the financial and contractual details associated with the Item.  The information more specifically related to the Service Item is recorded in the Charges and Revenue fields, as this information allows service and support organizations to calculate the costs of offering a service and if appropriate, recover the costs from the customers.

    Charges
    Price (per user)	Draws the figure from the Service Item Type Costs tab and displays this as a daily amount. This figure is then multiplied with the number of Users/Customers assigned to the Item, to calculate the Revenue costs.
    Cost  (per user)	Draws the figure from the Inherited Costs  and displays this as a daily amount. This figure is then multiplied with the number of Users/Customers assigned to the Item, to calculate the actual Costs.
    Revenue
    Month to Date	Uses the Charges figure, multiplied with the number or Users and days of month passed, to calculate the month to date figure.
    Previous Month	A reference figure for an average monthly cost, based on the previous months revenue for the Service Item.
    Availability
    Avg Repair Time	Entries displayed here are automatically calculated based on the average length of time an Item is offline.
    Avg Time To Fail	Figures displayed here are automatically calculated based on the average time between an Item being moved to an offline State.