From Technology Towers to Customs Outcomes at Northwind Logistics
Northwind Logistics is a 1,200-person freight company operating in 14 countries. Its IT function is organized into technology towers-network, applications, end-user computing, and data centre-and each tower runs its own ticket queue. Business units complain that a new customs-clearance capability took 11 months to deliver, that incidents are routed by team rather than by business service, and that no one owns the end-to-end outcome. The new CIO wants to adopt VeriSM. The board has asked for a complete service catalogue, but business units already buy SaaS tools directly and argue that central IT is too slow. Roughly 40% of the IT budget is consumed by run and maintain work, and customs data is subject to strict regulatory reporting. The CIO has six months to show a more service-oriented operating model without stopping current deliveries.
1. Using VeriSM's definition of a service and value, explain how the CIO should reframe the customs-clearance example. What should be treated as the service, the product, and the consumer?
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A service is a means of delivering value to a consumer by facilitating outcomes the consumer wants, without the consumer owning all the specific costs and risks. A product is the configured set of resources-software, infrastructure, people, and information-that supports the service. For Northwind, the service is not 'the customs application' or 'the network'. It is the outcome: shipments clear customs accurately and within an agreed lead time, with compliant declarations. The product includes the customs platform, integrations, reference data, and support staff. The consumers are the shipper, the customs broker, and internal operations teams; each experiences value differently. Reframing forces the CIO to map the end-to-end value stream, identify a service owner, and define service levels around clearance time and compliance quality rather than tower uptime. It also exposes that SaaS tools bought outside central IT may already be part of the service, so they cannot be ignored.
2. The board wants an exhaustive service catalogue as the first step. Give a reasoned argument for or against this, and outline the first Define-stage activities you would recommend.
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An exhaustive catalogue built from tower names would codify the current silos and take months, while the real problem is unclear outcomes and ownership. VeriSM's Define stage starts with context: consumers, outcomes, value, constraints, and service boundaries. Recommended first activities are: interview business and external consumers to identify the top five outcomes; map the customs value stream end to end; agree service names in business language; assign provisional service owners; record constraints such as regulatory reporting and the 40% run cost; and publish a thin, outcome-oriented catalogue that can evolve. The SaaS spend should be included in the service landscape, not banned or hidden. This gives the board visibility without pretending the first catalogue is complete. The test of the catalogue is whether a business consumer can find the outcome they need and know who owns it.