Setting Up a Service Level Management Process
A service level management program ensures that all IT Services delivered to customers meet agreed-upon standards of quality. It involves ensuring that Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are in place, being adhered to and service levels are measured and reported on.
To achieve this, it’s essential to have the appropriate tools in place. Often the processes and systems used to determine service levels are outsourced to third-party companies. It is therefore essential to know how to manage them in the context of your own SLM processes.
The first step in setting up an SLM process is to identify the services that are most crucial for the company and to establish appropriate metrics for success. This is usually a matter of considering factors like efficiency in terms of user base, efficiency, and design aspects. It is important to carefully choose the right technology expertise of a company that is focused on a specific platform may be able to provide greater performance than a generalised service provider.
Once the SLA targets are set and the team has to develop plans to keep them. This typically involves putting in place systems that monitor progress, and notify the team of issues in achieving targets.
In addition, a robust SLM process will incorporate continuous improvement processes. This will help teams analyze the data they collect, and then find ways to improve the processes that are causing them issues. For example, if a NOC service is frequently not meeting its SLA for answering phone calls within 30 seconds it should be possible to pinpoint the reason for the reasons for this, and then fix it.
