Business services are the supporting activities that help a company operate or maintain its productivity and profitability. These activities may be performed by internal employees or external service providers. They include IT, finance, procurement, shipping and retail industries as well as many others. The business services industry is a growing sector and offers numerous career opportunities to qualified professionals.
The term “business services” may refer to any industry that assists or supports the operations of a company. This includes industries that provide IT services to a company, such as software development or networking, or the financial industry, which includes accounting and taxes. It can also include the procurement and shipping industries or any other industry that supports a company’s day-to-day functions, such as marketing or legal services.
While the business services industry is growing, it still faces many challenges, including low average productivity and persisting legal barriers that have inhibited cross-border trade in Europe. However, EU internal market legislation and policy actions are designed to remove these barriers and stimulate competitiveness within the industry.
What Are the Types of Business Services?
The types of business services can vary from company to company. However, there are a few key characteristics that all business services share:
Intangibility: The provision of business services does not result in the production of a physical product. Therefore, they cannot be stored as inventory like goods and must be delivered at the moment of demand. This makes it necessary for customers to be involved in the service delivery process and can influence their satisfaction with the service.
Specialized expertise: Businesses often seek out specialized business services to help them meet specific requirements or to address unique challenges. Outsourcing these functions can save money while allowing companies to focus on their core business activities. Flexibility and scalability: Business services can be scaled up or down as needed to match changing business demands. They can also be shifted between different locations to respond to shifting market conditions.
Mapping technical services to business services provides non-technical stakeholders with context when an incident impacts one of the services that they care about. This feature can be found on the status dashboard and is available to Admin, Manager and Global Admin base roles. To create a new business service, navigate to the dashboard and select “New Business Service”. Enter a name to define the service, then assign it to a team. The team is the organization that will be impacted when this service experiences an incident with a qualifying priority. For more information, see Checking Your Role or Changing Your User Permissions. The business service will then be displayed on the status dashboard and visible to all users assigned to that team. If the team is not assigned to a role that can manage business services, they will not be able to access the business service. For more information, see Managing Business Services.