Value of a IT-Service

What is a IT-Service?!

Within the last 5 years, I finally learned to understand what a IT-Service really is!

This post should give you an idea, which kind of real value a IT-Service can provide!

I am sure that the most of the IT-Professionals within IT Service company’s didn’t fully understand what a IT-Service is! And that is normal, because almost no one ever explains this to them! so the most IT-Professionals are caught in the technical daily business view… No one every provides them with a High-level overview…

Let me give you an example to explain, what a IT-Service really means:

The best example for this case is the company DHL..

DHL is a global player in Logistics and they are specialized in delivering packages or mail.

So, the typical customers of DHL are the senders and the receivers of packages or mail. So basically, a customer asks DHL to deliver a specific package from destination “A” to destination “B” (the receiver). Sounds easy so far… well for DHL this is a lot more detailed process and they must perform a lot of different tasks to fulfill this service, but from my perspective DHL is good in optimizing these internal processes and their main business enabler is their IT! Now you start to ask: why?!

Let’s do a little time travel, to explain this:

20 years ago, DHL was not there yet, but the Deutsche Post was in place already… and there were mail offices all around Germany, and the Deutsche Post had a huge number of employees who worked in the local post offices or as delivers and so on…

So basically, a customer always needed to go into one of these mail offices to send a package from “A” to “B”… it was not possible to send a package without placing the request within a local mail office… these mail offices were usually opened from 09:00 am in the morning until 04:00 pm in the evening… and that is the first limitation in this whole DHL Package delivering Service (from the customer perspective) … I (as a customer) was only able to send a package if I could make my way into these mail offices within these usually opening hours…

But then there was a second limitation:

If I (the sender) would send a package to someone else, and he (the receiver)… is not at home when the DHL delivery employee tried to deliver the package to his address, the package could not get delivered… well, they soon started to redirect these packages to mail offices, so that the receiver were able to pick up his package from the mail offices, but then again… the receiver was only able to pick up his package within these usually opening hours of the mail office…

And this is exactly the point where the IT-Service kicks in! Because:

DHL introduced DHL automated Package stations (DHL Packetstationen in german) and they introduced the ability to place orders via the internet… so from that moment on the customers were able to place orders from their living room, by simply printing a small sheet of paper and glue it on the package itself… and then with these automated package stations the customers were able to send or receive packages whenever they wanted… this Service was not limited anymore to the opening hours of these mail offices…

And this is the best example of a valuable IT-Service! Only with these IT-Services DHL was able to extend their business and save money at the same time, well, off course they at first hat to invest into their IT to establish these IT-Services… But now their Packages Delivering Services is established and well used by customers..

So, the IT-Service is the real business enabler in this case.