A service level management program ensures that all IT Services delivered to customers are of agreed standards of quality. It is about ensuring that Service Level Agreements are in place and are being observed, measuring and reporting on service levels, and continuously working to improve service levels over time.
It is vital to have the correct tools in place to achieve all of this. A lot of the processes and systems that determine service levels are outsourced to third-party businesses. It is therefore crucial to know how to manage them in the context of your own SLM processes.
The first step to setting up an SLM process is to determine the most essential services for the business, and then establish realistic measures of success. This includes factors such as efficiency, user base, and design factors. It is important to choose the right technology expertise – a company specializing 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 plans to keep them. This typically means implementing systems that track progress and alert the team automatically when there are issues in meeting the targets.
In addition, a solid SLM process will incorporate continuous improvement procedures. These processes will enable teams to learn and improve by studying the metrics they track. For example, if a NOC service is often not able to meet its SLA for answering calls within 30 seconds it should be possible to determine the reasons for this, and correct it.