In ServiceNow, Services and Service Offerings are key components of the Service Portfolio Management (SPM) and IT Service Management (ITSM) modules. They help organizations define, manage, and deliver services in a structured way. Associating these with Incident, Change, Request, and Problem, ensures better tracking, reporting, and accountability.
What is a Service?
A Service is an end-to-end IT service that delivers value to customers and combines people, processes, and technology to provide outputs or results that enable business capabilities or an end user’s work activities and desired outcomes.
Some examples include:
- Financial management
- Printing
- Videoconferencing
What a Service is Not
A Service is not a support task, an application, a piece of hardware, or a team. A service isn't what an IT professional does, but rather, the capability that effort enables, e.g. “I need the capability to…” print, send email, schedule a room, register for courses, pay tuition, etc.
What is a Service Offering?
A Service Offering is the specific technology-focused activity or product used to deliver a service. Multiple service offerings may exist for a single service. Examples of service offerings for email and calendaring might include Gmail, Outlook, Google Groups, and Google Calendar.
Updates to Incident, Change, Request, and Problem forms
Starting June 4, 2025, updated Services and Service Offerings have been updated in ServiceNow. The Service and Service Offering fields can now be associated with incidents, change, requests, and problem tickets.
Benefits
Associating services and service offerings with tickets gives IT greater visibility into how our services are utilized and who our consumers are. This enhanced insight enables more robust reporting, helping us identify which systems, services, user groups, or individuals are impacted by changes, problems, or major incidents. Over time, this will strengthen our ability to proactively assess risk and reduce response times during outages. Additionally, capturing this data supports the development of meaningful metrics that are currently unavailable, allowing bIT to better track, measure, and improve the services we deliver.
How to Utilize Service and Service Offerings
Option 1
- Service Field: Begin by searching and selecting the appropriate Service.
- Service Offering Field: Once a Service is selected, the Service Offering field will automatically filter to display only the offerings associated with that specific Service. This ensures users can only choose relevant options tied to the selected Service.
- Tip! type in an asterisk (*) to do a wildcard search for a service or offering.
Once the Service is selected, search for the appropriate Service Offering. The offerings will be filtered to only reflect offerings associated with a specific Service.
Option 2
- Service Offering Field: Once a Service Offering is selected, the Service field automatically populates the Service associated with the offering.
- Tip! type in an asterisk (*) to do a wildcard search for a service or offering.
Once these are populated, selecting the information icon next to the Service will provide details of all other tasks associated with the Service! There are other reports that can be generated to provide more detailed information.