Business Services vs IT Services
vs Digital Services

What is the difference? Even a relatively simple web search will yield a large number of different definitions for these types of services. After identifying and debating the alternatives, no one definition seems to be completely sufficient on its own.

Types of Services - Definitions

However, the following definitions seem to be the most acceptable in "conventional wisdom" terms.

Why is it important? If we all use different definitions of Services then this will only serve to confuse and create complexity. As Services are the most important business artefacts or entities we help to manage, it is important that you know what we mean when we use the terms above.

If we start with a general definition of any type of service, the best definition seems to be that from the ITIL Glossary of Terms:

A Service is a means of delivering value to Customers by facilitating outcomes Customers want to achieve without the ownership of specific Costs and Risks.

A key concept that can be argued is missing from this definition is that of the specific capability of the Service Provider to deliver the value implicit in the Service. Nevertheless, we generally use this definition.

Business Service

The best clues for a suitable definition again come from the ITIL Glossary of Terms:

"An IT Service that directly supports a Business Process, as opposed to an Infrastructure Service which is used internally by the IT Service Provider and is not usually visible to the Business. The term Business Service is also used to mean a Service that is delivered to Business Customers by Business Units. For example delivery of financial services to Customers of a bank, or goods to the Customers of a retail store. Successful delivery of Business Services often depends on one or more IT Services."

We need to remember that ITIL predominately takes the IT perspective. We would argue that the first sentence in particular needs to be generalised as the concept implied can apply to any function within the Service Provider, for example Finance or Business Operations. If this is the case, it effectively reduces to the second sentence. Hence we use the following definition for a Business Service:

A Business Service is a Service that is delivered to Business Customers by Business Units. For example delivery of financial services to Customers of a bank, or goods to the Customers of a retail store. Successful delivery of Business Services often depends on one or more Supporting Services.

This means that we need to further define what we mean by a "Supporting Service". This is a little easier.

A Supporting Service is a service that is performed to support a Business Service but usually is not visible to the Customers of the Business Service. A Supporting Service may be provided internally by the Service Provider organisation (sometimes referred to as an Infrastructure Service) or it may be provided by a third party Service Provider.

From an architectural perspective, a Supporting Service is a subset of a Business Service. Furthermore, even Supporting Services make a valuable contribution to business activity.

Hence when we refer to Business Services alone, generally we mean that this includes Supporting Services.

IT Service

The definition we use is as follows:

An IT Service is a Service provided by the IT function in an organisation. It can be "customer-facing", that is, a Business Service, or it can be a Supporting Service.

A similar definition would apply to the services provided by all other functions within a organisation.

Digital Service

At the time of writing we were not able to find a suitable de facto (or de jure) definition of a Digital Service. However, the best description of a Digital Service we have been able to gather is as follows:

A Digital Service is one that has been entirely automated and which is controlled by the Customer of the Service, for example, as an "app" on a mobile phone or tablet PC.

Furthermore, a Digital Service is usually an on-line service or it contains a significant on-line component. For example, a Digital Service may use information from a separate computer system or another Digital Service accessed in real time through the internet or an alternative network. Two or more Digital Services can be combined to produce a single, more powerful Digital Service for a Customer.

As a result we use the following definition of a Digital Service:

A Digital Service is one that has been entirely automated and which is controlled by the Customer of the Service.