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A typical service level agreement will include items
like:
• Warranty information
• System for dealing with disagreements and
cancellations
• Management and ongoing monitoring of assets
• Support and problem solving
• Security
• Information confdentiality concerns
• Property rights
• Legal compliance issues/concerns
• Extent and nature of the work being performed
• Actual performance (in real time)
• Troubleshooting
Once all the necessary areas of interest and duty
have been outlined via the service level agreement, a
service level manager can use that info to defne and
perform their duties. In most cases, it is the duty of
those directly involved in service level management
to actually construct an agreement; this makes perfect
sense too because it will also be their duty to monitor
the system once it’s up and running.
But the main goal of SLM (service level management)
should be to give IT the power to bring the ideas,
concepts, and productivity of any business to life.
That is to say that (through implementation of
Service Level Management) an IT department should
be doing everything within its power to enhance
and facilitate the business processes of its parent
organization. This is becoming increasingly important
as well because technology continues to grow at an
alarming rate. Today’s businesses are often entirely
dependent on (not only) their internal computing
infrastructure(s) but also web-deployments and
services as well.
How service level management is formally
established:
First
, it is necessary to review all existing services in
order to determine what, if any, changes must be
made. This also allows you to clearly identify what is
working and what isn’t.
Then
, those providing the IT services/management
will enter into a dialogue or conference with
their customer, or employer, in order to establish
expectations and add additional components as
needed/required. At some point, it will be necessary
to also take a detailed look at any and all existing
contracts between the client and third party vendors/
service providers. This is simply to ensure that
there are no obvious qualms and that any existing
contractual limitations/obligations won’t trigger a
lapse in service (downtime = loss of profts, after all).
Afterwards
, an SLA (service level agreement) can
be formally established and used to further assist in
designing a SLM setup. Once everything has been
covered, it might also be benefcial to summarize
client expectations with regards to any future
improvements to specifc/individual services. This, of
course, goes hand in hand with creating a detailed
plan of action for future growth as well.
It is also important for any SLM agreement to clearly
indicate what its priorities or chief concerns actually
are. This not only helps the client to better understand
how they will beneft but also clearly underlines the
role that IT management should be playing in the
business.
Finally
, after everything is laid out, formal projections
should be made and data should be gathered that
would detail how SLM services are fnancially viable
(as a general rule, it’s always a good idea to try and
make friends in the accounting department).
If service level management properly defnes every
relevant aspect of a business’ IT assets, it can only
improve their sales and standing. SLM is really a
system for streamlining IT processes so that an
organization is able to utilize its available technologies
in the absolute best (and most proftable) manner
possible.