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Service maps are an incredibly powerful tool in the hands of business leaders. At their core, service maps are visual representations of the relationship between your company and your customers that tell a story about how you interact with them in different stages of their journey with you.
Service maps show the status of your environment and help troubleshoot performance problems between applications and databases. The map is color-coded, so you can quickly identify which node is affected by an issue and know where you need to focus your efforts.
Without these visual representations, it can be difficult for people to understand where they fit into the big picture—and that’s why service maps are so valuable. But there are many types of service maps out there; which one should you use? Let us find out about different types of service mapping and what works best for your business.
Check out: What’s new in service mapping in 2023?
1. Interface map
Interface maps specify which requests should be routed to the target service. They can contain conditions that express routing decisions, or they can contain operation maps that define how the source and target interfaces should be connected.
Interface maps aggregate interface specifications from the source service, so an interface map can contain multiple interface specification maps in order to describe the connections needed for complex transformations.
2. Customer journey map
The customer journey map is a visual representation of the customer experience. It shows where customers begin their journey, how they progress through it to complete a goal, and what they feel at each step along the way.
The customer journey map can help you understand what problems your customers are experiencing and why they’re not completing their goals. You can also use it to identify opportunities where you could make your product more useful or desirable for your target audience.
3. Operations map
An operations map defines which target operation is called depending on the content of the request. If you want to, you can also connect more than one operation map to a particular source operation.
While you can define an operation map as a single message map and one or more conditions, you’ll often want to use multiple message maps to model a business process that requires more than one input or output.
4. Blueprint service map
The blueprint service map is a visual representation of the customer journey. It shows the different stages of the customer journey and how they interact, providing an overview of all touchpoints during a customer’s visit to your business.
The blueprint service map is useful because it allows you to identify opportunities for improvement, such as:
- The number of steps between performing an action and receiving feedback on that action (e.g., requesting information). The farther apart these two steps are, the longer it will take for customers to receive helpful information about their experience. This can cause customers to lose interest in continuing with their transaction or doing business with you again in general.
- Steps where there is no clear path forward (e.g., if customers need help but there aren’t any buttons or prompts that guide them through finding this help).
5. Process service map
A process service map is a visual representation of the steps that are required to deliver a service. It helps illustrate where inefficiencies exist, which can be used to improve the way you do business.
In this type of map, there are three main elements:
- The customer’s journey from start to finish (also known as the user flow)
- The touch points along that journey (also known as integration with other systems and software)
- The person responsible for each step within each touch point
6. Message map
A message map defines the flow, inputs, and output of a single service operation. Message maps provide a blueprint for how data will be moved in your system. Data maps are a way to control transformations between different types within a message map.
A message map is a crucial component of the service contract that describes how a service accepts and returns data to its consumers. To keep track of the input and output of each operation, a message map can be used to describe all of the messages that are accepted and returned in the definition of each request and response.
Read: The undeniable benefits of service mapping
Which type of service mapping works best for your business?
Service maps are incredibly valuable, but you need to learn which type is best for your business.
Service maps are a great way to structure thinking and planning. They’re also useful tools for creating a shared understanding of how your business works, which makes them an excellent starting point when you’re trying to identify opportunities for improvement or innovation.
Service maps are especially useful in service-oriented businesses like banks, insurance companies, hospitals, tech companies, where the value is created through interactions with customers and clients. In other words, service mapping can help you find new ways to improve customer experience while increasing revenue at the same time.
Business service mapping involves using available information from business organizations and interviews with business owners to identify the common business service required. Each service record should contain a definition, brief description of its intent and use, as well as a list of consumers that consume it. This process requires leadership commitment to drive the initiative and full participation by all involved.
Some IT organizations that use CMDBs to manage services don’t apply asset or business service mapping. They may believe that mapping every service is a good practice, but it’s not. This can be costly, time-consuming, and confusing for business users. Instead, focus on the services your organization needs most.
The CMDB helps you monitor the availability, performance and capacity of your business services. You can use the information to make informed decisions about things such as how policies should change, when new servers will be needed or what servers can be retired. The right decision support tools help you to make sure these choices are made and implemented successfully.
Connect with experts to find the right service map for your enterprise
We hope this information about service maps has given you a better idea of how useful this tool can be for your business. With so many different types of service map, it’s important to know which one will work best for your needs and goals.
If you’re still unsure which service map would be best suited for you, we recommend connecting with the experts at Virima right away.
Businesses are faced with the challenge of integrating services that span multiple platforms. The challenge is real! With Virima’s application dependency mapping software, you can leverage an intuitive interface that allows you to do so without impacting your bottom line.
Our solution helps you explore, understand, and map the technology landscape of your organization – so that you can gain better control over your business.
Find out more about service mapping and how it can be best leveraged for your business by scheduling a demo with Virima.
