The Service Catalog in ServiceNow is a list of predefined goods and services (catalog items) that customers can request.
In ServiceNow a Business Service Calalog can be defined after activating the Service Portfolio Management Plugin.
At first glance there seems to be is no relationship between the Business Service Catalog and the Service Catalog: two separate worlds.
If you plan to implement both it seems likely that these to catalogs do have a connection. The business Service Catalog defines at a high level what services are available and the Service Catalog is used for ordering and is the start of the fulfillment of these orders.
Example: In the Business Service Catalog an offering ‘Standard Laptop Support’ is defined. In the Service Catalog a catalog item is available for ordering a standard laptop.
The point is, that you have to setup the subscriptions for the offerings and entitlements for catalog items. This looks like double administration with high risk of inconsistency.
However…when defining entitlements upon service catalog items there is (after activating the Service Portfolio Management plugin) the possibility to add an additional list: Available for subscriptions.
After adding this list to the catalog item form, it possible to relate catalog items to an offering.
At this point we do not only have established a relation ship between Business Service Catalog and the Service Catalog. But also, as the relations name indicates, the users/groups/companies/departments/locations subscribed upon an offering are now also entitled to all related Catalog Items!
When customers want to request items from the Service Catalog they only get presented the catalog items they are entitled to via the subscription they have on offerings.
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