Setting Up a Service Level Management Process

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A service level management system makes sure that all IT services provided to customers comply with agreed levels of quality. It is about ensuring that Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are in place, being met and that service levels are tracked and reported on.

In order to accomplish this, it’s crucial to have the proper tools in place. The processes and systems that determine service levels are outsourced to third party companies. It is important to understand how to manage them within your own SLM process.

The first step to setting up an SLM process is to identify the most essential services for the business and establish realistic measures of the success of the process. This will include aspects like effectiveness, user base, and design aspects. It is also essential to select your technology expertise with care – for example, a company that specialises in a particular platform may be able of committing to higher levels of performance than a generalized service provider.

Once the SLA goals have been established the teams must establish a strategy to meet them. This usually means setting up systems that can track progress, and notify the team when there are issues with meeting goals.

A strong SLM process also includes ongoing improvement processes. They will allow teams to gain insight from the metrics they collect, and identify ways to improve the processes that cause them issues. If, for instance a NOC service fails to meet its SLA of answering calls within 30 seconds, then it’s possible to identify the root cause and correct it.