A process for managing service levels ensures that all IT services offered to customers meet agreed-upon levels of quality. It involves ensuring that Service level Agreements (SLAs) are in place, that they are fulfilled and that service levels are tracked and reported.
To achieve this, it is crucial to have the appropriate tools in place. Often, the systems and processes that determine service levels are outsourced to third-party businesses. It is therefore crucial to know how best to manage them in the context of your own SLM processes.
The first step in setting up a SLM process is determining what services are crucial to the company, and establishing reasonable measures of the success of the process. This is usually a matter of considering factors such as efficiency of the user base, as well as design aspects. It is crucial to choose the technology expertise and a firm that specializes in a specific platform may be able to guarantee higher levels of performance than general service providers.
After the SLA targets are set the teams need to create an action plan to meet them. This usually involves putting in systems that monitor progress and alert teams automatically when there are issues in meeting the goals.
A well-designed SLM process also incorporates continuous improvement processes. These processes will enable teams to improve and learn through the metrics they collect. For instance, if a NOC service repeatedly fails to meet its SLA of answering telephone calls within 30 seconds, then it is possible to pinpoint the root cause and correct it.