Building a Service Catalog Employees Actually Want to Use

Most IT organizations have a service catalog. Far fewer have one that employees use willingly. All too often, the catalog is a long list of technical items described in IT terminology, organized according to the structure of the IT department rather than the needs of the people it serves. Employees, unable to find what they need, revert to email, telephone calls or a quiet word with someone they know in IT.

A well-designed service catalog changes this behavior, but only if it is built around the employee rather than the provider.

Start With What Employees Need

The most effective catalogs begin with an analysis of what employees actually request. Ticket history, email requests and service desk call logs reveal the most common needs. These should appear prominently, described in plain language. An employee looking for help is more likely to search for “new laptop” or “access to a shared drive” than for a technical service name.

Design Principles for a Usable Catalog

Several principles distinguish a catalog that employees embrace from one they avoid.

• Simplicity. Request forms should ask only for information that is genuinely required, and should prefill details the system already knows, such as the employee’s department, location and manager.
• Smart forms. Questions should adapt based on previous answers, so that the employee sees only what is relevant to their request.
• Clear expectations. Each item should state what the employee will receive, how long it will take and whether approval is required.
• Transparency. After submitting a request, employees should be able to see its status at any time without contacting anyone.
• Accessibility. The catalog should be available through a portal, mobile devices and the collaboration tools employees already use.

Connect the Catalog to Fulfillment

A catalog is only as good as the workflow behind it. If submitting a request merely generates an email to a fulfillment team, the employee experience will remain slow and opaque. Each catalog item should trigger an automated workflow that handles approvals, assigns tasks and, where possible, completes fulfillment without human intervention.

Extend Beyond IT

Employees do not distinguish between IT, human resources and facilities when they need help. The most successful organizations offer a single employee portal that brings services from multiple departments together, so that people have one place to go for everything they need.

The Bottom Line

A service catalog succeeds when it reflects the language and needs of employees rather than the structure of the IT department. Simple forms, clear expectations, real-time status and automated fulfillment encourage adoption and reduce the volume of informal requests. Extending the catalog across departments creates a single front door for the entire organization. When employees find the catalog easier than sending an email, adoption follows naturally, and the organization gains the data it needs to keep improving.