The business services sector provides support functions for businesses and organizations. Examples include human resources, administration, logistics, travel services, security, cleaning services and waste handling. Companies in this industry provide an important and varied set of services that are vital for all businesses, no matter the size. This sector is rapidly growing due to technological advances and new communication technologies and infrastructure. Many startups have emerged worldwide, providing business solutions that are innovative, flexible and sustainable. The coronavirus pandemic has further boosted growth and demand in this sector.
There are two types of business services: product-based and service-based. Product-based businesses focus on creating and delivering products to customers. This involves developing products with a high market value and improving them over time. For example, a company could produce a new type of laptop that offers more features or a faster processor. Service-based business services do not create any physical products, but rather enable other businesses to perform their activities more efficiently and effectively. Examples of these services include information technology, which helps other business services such as accounting and shipping. This business model requires less start-up capital as there is no need to invest in producing a physical good.
A successful business needs a few things to grow and thrive: a product or service that is unique, and customers willing to pay for it. Having these in place allows businesses to focus their resources on developing and marketing their offerings. Business services can help a business grow and expand its offering, or it can provide more focused support functions such as payroll, HR and financial management.
The business services industry has a significant impact on the economy, creating over 10 million jobs and contributing almost $3 trillion to GDP in the United States. This is more than the automotive manufacturing and food processing industries combined. This supersector consists of a large number of diverse, small and medium-sized businesses that provide professional, administrative, and management services to other businesses and organizations. This includes such diverse activities as payroll, legal services, accounting, advertising, marketing and consulting, as well as waste management and other support functions.
This section presents a wide range of statistics and trends in the business services industry. It covers industry employment, labor force participation, unemployment and projections, gross job gains and losses, union membership and representation, and other economic data. It also discusses the business services industry’s contributions to the national economy and society at large.
The ability to map IT services to business services is an important capability for incident management. This enables non-technical stakeholders to understand what services are critical to the business and how they are impacted when there is an issue with those services. The list of business services that are mapped to IT services can be displayed on an external status page, in the Service Catalog or CMDB, or defined in relation to existing health metrics from a monitoring tool. To create a business service, navigate to Services > Business services and click New business service. Name: Enter a meaningful name that defines the service. Team (Only available on the Business, Enterprise for Incident Management and Digital Operations (legacy) plans): Select a team associated with the business service.
