Setting Up a Service Level Management Process

A service level management program ensures that all IT Services provided to customers meet agreed-upon levels of quality. It involves ensuring Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are in place, are being met and that service levels are tracked and reported on.

To achieve this, it is crucial to have the necessary tools in place. Often the processes and systems used to determine service levels are leased out to third parties. It is therefore SLM benefits for facilities management essential to know how to manage them within the context of your own SLM processes.

The first step in setting up a SLM process is identifying what services are crucial to the company and setting reasonable measures of success. This will include factors such as efficiency, user base, and design considerations. It is crucial to choose the right technology expertise that a company that is specialized in a particular platform may be able to guarantee greater performance than a generalised service provider.

Once the SLA goals have been established teams must create a plan to uphold them. This typically involves implementing systems that monitor the progress of the team and notify them automatically when there are problems in meeting the targets.

A strong SLM process also includes ongoing improvement processes. They will allow teams to take the information they collect, and identify ways to improve the processes that cause problems. For instance, if an NOC service repeatedly fails to meet its SLA of responding to phone calls in 30 seconds, then it should be possible identify the cause and fix it.