Setting Up a Service Level Management Process

A service level management process ensures that all IT services provided to customers meet agreed-upon levels of quality. It is about ensuring that Service Level Agreements are in place and are being observed, measuring and reporting on service levels, and continuously working to improve service levels over time.

It is crucial to have the correct tools in place to achieve all of this. Often the processes and systems used to define the service levels are subcontracted out to third parties. It is important to know how to manage them within your own SLM process.

The first step in setting up a SLM process is identifying the essential services to the company and establishing the appropriate metrics for the success of the process. This will include aspects like effectiveness, user base, and design factors. It is also crucial to choose the right technology expert For instance a company that is specialised in a particular platform might be able to commit to higher levels of performance than a generalised service provider.

After the SLA goals are established then teams need to devise a plan to maintain them. This typically means implementing systems that track progress and notify the team automatically when there are issues in meeting the targets.

A strong SLM top article process also includes continuous improvement processes. These will enable teams to gain insight from the metrics they track, and discover ways of improving the processes that are causing them issues. If, for example, an NOC service is consistently failing to meet its SLA of responding to phone calls within 30 seconds, then it is possible to pinpoint the cause and fix it.