A process for managing service levels ensures that all IT services delivered to customers meet agreed-upon levels of quality. It is about ensuring that Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are in place, being met and that service levels are monitored and reported on.
To accomplish all of this, it's essential to have the necessary tools in place. Often, the systems and processes used to define service levels are outsourced to third party. It is therefore essential to know how you can best manage them in the context of your own SLM processes.
The first step to setting up an SLM process is to determine what services are most important for the business, and then establish reasonable measures of the success of the process. This typically involves analyzing aspects like efficiency in terms of user base, efficiency, and design considerations. It is also essential to select the right expertise in technology For instance, a company that specialises in a specific platform may be able of committing to higher levels of performance than a generalised service provider.
Once the SLA targets are set and the team has to develop an action plan to meet them. This typically involves putting in place systems to monitor progress and alert the team of issues with achieving targets.
In addition, a robust SLM process will include continuous improvement processes. These will help teams to analyze the data they collect, and then find ways of improving the processes that cause them issues. For instance, if an NOC service is consistently 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.