A service level management process ensures that all IT services offered to customers meet agreed-upon levels of quality. It is about ensuring that Service Level Agreements are in place and are being observed, measuring and reporting on service levels, and continually striving to improve the quality of service offered over time.
In order to accomplish this, it is crucial to have the right tools in place. Oft, the systems and processes used to define the service levels are subcontracted out to third party. It is therefore crucial to know how best to manage them in the context of your own SLM processes.
The first step to set up an SLM process is to determine the most essential services for the business, and then establish realistic measures of success. This will include aspects like effectiveness, user base and design aspects. It is also essential to select the right expertise in technology For instance an organization that specializes in a particular platform might be able to promise higher levels of performance than a more generalised service provider.
After the SLA targets are set then teams need to devise plans to keep them. This usually involves the establishment of systems that monitor progress, and notify the team of issues with meeting goals.
A well-designed SLM process also incorporates continuous improvement processes. This will help teams gain insight from the metrics they track, and discover ways of improving the processes that are causing them issues. If, for example, the NOC service consistently fails to meet its SLA of answering phone calls in 30 seconds, then it should be possible identify the reason and fix it.
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