What are services and utilities as assets?
Service assets and critical utilities are third-party services and essential supplies your company depends on every day. Unlike technology or buildings that you typically own and manage, these assets are provided by outside vendors. If they fail, operations can quickly stall. Many services replace or supplement your internal technology or physical assets, with the key difference that you don’t own them—you outsource them or buy them “as a service.”
Even if they don’t show up directly on your balance sheet, they’re among your company’s most critical assets. Keeping an inventory, assigning an internal owner, assessing risks, and tracking contracts and SLAs will help keep the business running—even during outages.
What services and utilities do US SMBs most commonly use?
Purchased external services
- managed IT services (MSP)
- cloud and SaaS (Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Salesforce, Slack)
- outsourced accounting or payroll
- legal and HR consulting/advisory
Utilities
- electricity
- internet and telecom (broadband, fiber, mobile)
- water and natural gas
- district heating or externally provided HVAC
Why managing services and utilities matters
- Your business relies on them—SMBs frequently outsource and can be highly dependent on vendors, so choose reliable providers.
- Outages or instability create risk—loss of power, internet, or a cloud provider can halt operations immediately.
- Vendor risk—weak contracts, poor security, or noncompliance can jeopardize your data and services.
- Compliance requirements—frameworks like NIST CSF, SOC 2, or ISO 27001 require tracking and assessing dependencies on vendors and utilities.
How to manage purchased services and their risks
- First, manage your vendors and keep contracts under control: maintain an inventory of all external services, providers, and critical supplies.
- Assign ownership—identify who in your company is accountable for each vendor relationship.
- Assess service criticality—decide which services are mission-critical versus nice-to-have.
- Know the risks of purchased services—what happens if a service or vendor fails, and what are the alternatives.
- Control contracts and SLAs—clearly define service levels, responsibilities, security requirements, and escalation paths.
Frequently asked questions (FAQ)
- What are service assets and utilities in a company? External services (vendors, SaaS, outsourcing) and essential supplies (electricity, internet, water) without which the business cannot operate.
- How do they differ from technology assets? Technology assets are hardware and software you own and manage internally. Service assets and utilities are delivered by external providers.
- Why are they important from a risk management perspective? Your company is only as resilient as its weakest vendor—an outage of a service or utility can stop operations.