Setting Up a Service Level Management Process

A service level management system ensures that all IT services offered to customers meet agreed upon standards of quality. It involves ensuring Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are in place, are followed and that the quality of service are tracked and reported.

It is vital to have the right tools in place for all of this. Oft the systems and processes used to determine the service levels are subcontracted out to third parties. It is essential to understand how to manage them within your own SLM process.

The first step in setting up an SLM procedure is to identify the services that are essential to the company and establishing a reasonable set of metrics for success. This will often include considering factors such as efficiency the benefits of slm in terms of user base, efficiency, and design considerations. It is important to carefully choose the technology expertise and a firm that specializes in one particular platform might be able to guarantee greater performance than a generalised service provider.

After the SLA goals have been established and the teams have to put a plan in place to ensure they are met. This usually involves creating systems that can track progress, and automatically alert the team of issues with achieving targets.

A well-designed SLM process also incorporates continuous improvement processes. They will allow teams to learn from the metrics they collect, and then find ways of improving the processes that cause problems. If, for instance an NOC service consistently fails to meet its SLA of responding to phone calls within 30 seconds, it’s possible to identify the root cause and correct it.