Business Service

Intro

A Business Service delivers an outcome to customers or internal users. In EA, it provides a stable view of what the business offers, independent of how systems implement it.

Key points:

• Stable contract between business and consumers
• Decouples “what” from “how” to reduce change impact
• Common in EA, BPM, and application design for service catalogues
• Pitfall: mixing process steps with service definitions

Examples:

• “Open new account” offered to retail customers across channels
• “Generate invoice” consumed by finance and e‑commerce platforms
• “Validate customer identity” reused by onboarding and fraud teams

In practice:

Define services by outcome and policy; map processes and applications as enablers.

Related terms: Service Portfolio; Business Capability; Service Level Agreement

FAQs:

Q: How is a business service different from an IT service?
A: A business service focuses on outcomes; IT services are technical enablers.

Q: Can one process support multiple services?
A: Yes, processes often enable several services or service variants.

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