A service level management program ensures that all IT Services provided to customers comply with agreed standards of quality. It involves ensuring that Service level Agreements (SLAs) are in place, are being fulfilled and that service levels are measured and reported on.
To achieve this, it’s crucial to have the proper tools in place. Oft the processes and systems used to determine service levels are outsourced to third parties. It is therefore vital to know how to manage them within the context of your own SLM processes.
The first step in setting up a SLM process is determining what services are important to the company and establishing a reasonable set of metrics for success. This will include factors like effectiveness, user base, and design factors. It is important to choose the expertise in technology you require that a company that is specialized in specific platforms may be able to guarantee higher levels of performance than general service providers.
Once the SLA goals are established, teams must create a plan to maintain them. This typically involves the establishment of systems that monitor progress and alert the team of problems in meeting the goals.
A well-designed SLM process also incorporates continuous improvement processes. These processes will allow teams to learn and improve by studying the metrics they collect. For top article instance, if an NOC service is regularly missing its SLA for answering phone calls within 30 seconds It should be possible to identify the reason for this, and fix it.
