About Us
The Difference
What makes the Service Management Society (SM-S) different from other professional associations? Well, we are not one!
We define a professional association as a membership organization designed to facilitate peer networking, discussion and the exchange of ideas in general. We are more focused on helping individual members of professional associations in achieving their career goals by defining the important roles and responsibilities within the service management profession, and offering a qualification scheme matched to those roles. Roles and qualifications that make a difference.
We are a society of like minded individuals organized to forward this objective. We encourage service management professionals who believe in this goal to help fund and forward our activities by joining the society.
In exchange we guarantee you a voice, a say in the scope and direction of each of the programs designed to achieve the objectives, and the benefit of having a qualification scheme that reflects your true value to a service organization.
We offer the following factors to differentiate our approach and the service management qualification scheme (SMQS) itself. The SMQS is:
Ten Key Differences
- Focused on the needs of the individual service management professional in enhancing and furthering their careers aspirations;
- Provides each professional with a voice, a say in the ongoing development of both the qualification scheme and its associated body of knowledge;
- Role-based, spanning the continuum of responsibilities found within a service organization, from customer facing to infrastructure management;
- Supported by a committment to continually survey and reflect industry trends in the demand for skills;
- Appreciative of the need for lifelong learning that is refelcted in the design of the qualification schemen and includes a continuing certification cycle and set of requirements that respects work experience and education history;
- Extensible and inclusive to all subject matter deemed relevant by the professional;
- Based upon a body of knowledge the content and scope of which is managed by the same professional community;
- Transparent in its operations, enabling professionals to take an active role in the development and quality assurance of key program elements;
- Respectful of other certification programs and personal accomplishments, allowing credit to recognized for any such achievements;
- Operated by a certification body held accountable to the stringent requirements of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and their intepretation of the ISO/IEC 17024 International Standard.
We need your help, and the help of your friends, colleagues and peerrs to accomplish this objective. The Society is a non-profit corporation that is funded by contributions from its Associates, to benefit its Associates. Please join us in our quest by becoming an Associate today.