Service Value Chain

The ITIL service value system includes everything needed to create value in the form of services. It encourages service providers to think about how all the different components needed to deliver services can work together to help co-create value with service consumers. The diagram below provides a way to visualize this.

The service value chain is a set of loosely coupled activities (or archetypes) that any service provider undertakes at some point (or even repeatedly). Regardless of the size of the service provider, the industry, the geography, or even the level of automation, the organization will conduct the following activities at some point (perhaps even continuously):

There are six kinds of activities in the Service Value Chain. Each one represents a broad activity type into which any and all of your current (and future) service management activities will fit:

• PLAN – All types of planning, at all levels
• ENGAGE – Any and all interactions with people who are external to the service value chain (employees, customers, management, partners/suppliers)
• DESIGN AND TRANSITION – Business analysis and development of new and improved services
• OBTAIN/BUILD – Any new resource brought into the value chain is sourced via obtain/build
• DELIVER AND SUPPORT – Provisioning services and providing help and information
• IMPROVE – Improvements at all levels

Everything you do today and in the future as a service organization will fit into one of these activity types. For every service outcome—whether that is to deliver a service, restore a service, improve a service, or create a new service—it will involve steps of these types. This allows you to map activities to activity types, giving them a consistent structure that can be understood across the organization.