A service level management process ensures that all IT services provided to customers are in accordance with agreed-upon levels of quality. It is about making sure that Service Level Agreements are in place and are being met, measuring and reporting on service levels, and continuously striving to improve the quality of service offered over time.
In order to accomplish this, it is essential to have the right tools in place. Most often the processes and systems used to define service levels are contracted out to third-party companies. It is important to know how to manage them within your own SLM process.
The first step in setting up a SLM procedure is to identify the essential services to the company and establishing a reasonable set of metrics for success. This is usually a matter of considering aspects like efficiency as well as user base and http://www.slm-info.org design considerations. It is also essential to select the right expertise in technology – for example an organization that specializes on a specific platform might be able to guarantee higher levels of performance than a more generalized service provider.
Once the SLA goals are established then teams need to devise an action plan to ensure they are met. This will usually involve putting in place systems that monitor progress and alert the team of problems in meeting the goals.
A well-designed SLM process also includes continuous improvement processes. These will enable teams to learn from the metrics they collect, and then find ways to improve the processes that are causing problems. For instance, if an NOC service is regularly missing its SLA for answering calls within 30 seconds it should be able to identify the reason why this is happening and then correct it.