Business services are activities that support a business without delivering a physical product. They are a subset of economic services and include a wide variety of business functions such as marketing, production, safety and cost analysis. Companies often rely on business service providers to provide round-the-clock services that are not available in-house. Business services providers are also a good choice for gaining access to expertise, technologies or facilities that are not readily available to businesses themselves.

For example, a company that specializes in providing information technology (IT) services can help a business develop an IT infrastructure that aligns with its business goals and improves its ability to be competitive. Other examples of business services include warehousing, transport and finance. A well-defined business service provides a complete set of tools that enable a business to better understand its customers, develop its workforce, and meet its financial obligations.

A company that offers a variety of different accounting and finance services is considered to be providing a business-to-business (B2B) service. This includes helping a business collect outstanding invoices, manage its accounts receivable and pay its bills on time. B2B accounting services can also assist a business with tax planning and filing.

In addition to the services offered by B2B firms, many of the same activities are performed by a number of other types of business. These include delivering professional and technical services to the business community, performing research and development work for clients and serving as an advisor to other firms.

These activities are referred to as tertiary economic services and represent an important component of the global economy. They are distinct from the primary and secondary sectors, which involve the manufacture of tangible goods and the distribution of these products. The third tier of the economic sector is composed of business services, which are activities that support businesses without producing a tangible commodity.

The business services industry is made up of a large variety of small businesses, each with its own set of skills and tools to perform its work. These include knowledge of the specific requirements of a client, experience in analyzing and responding to the needs of the market, and the ability to deliver value to the customer through effective service delivery.

In SL1, you can use the Business Services page to view a list of the business, IT and device services that are monitored. Each service displays its name, a description, the organization that owns it, and the contact details for the person who can be reached with any questions about that service. Besides basic info, the Business Services page also shows the availability, health and risk values for each service. If you want to make a service appear first on the list, you can mark it as Favorite. Favoriting a service makes it appear in the order you select on the Business Services page and the SL1 app. You can also add or remove a service from Favorite status by clicking the Actions button for that service and selecting Edit or Delete.