A process of managing service levels ensures that all IT services offered to customers meet agreed-upon standards of quality. It includes making sure that Service Level Agreements are in place and are being observed, measuring and reporting on the service levels, and continually striving to improve service levels over time.
To achieve this, it’s crucial to have the necessary tools in place. Often the systems and processes used to determine service levels are outsourced to third-party companies. It is therefore vital to know how you can best manage them within the context of your own SLM processes.
The first step in setting up a SLM process is determining the essential services to the business and establishing a reasonable set of metrics for success. This usually involves taking into consideration factors like efficiency as well as user base and design considerations. It is also important to select your technology expertise with care – for example, a company that specialises in a specific platform may be able to guarantee higher levels of performance than a generalized service provider.
Once the SLA targets have been set, teams need to create a plan to keep them. This typically involves setting up systems that track progress, and automatically alert the team of problems in meeting the goals.
A well-designed SLM process also incorporates continuous improvement processes. These processes will enable teams to improve and learn from the metrics that they collect. For instance, if an NOC service is consistently not meeting its SLA to answer phone calls within 30 seconds it should be possible to determine the reasons for this, and fix it.
