Service Level Management (SLM) is the process that is
responsible for the overall agreeing and documenting Service Level Targets
(SLT) and the responsibilities within Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and
Service Level Requirements (SLRs) for every service and related activity within
IT.
The SLA is effectively a level of guarantee or warranty with
regard to the level of service quality delivered by the service provider for
each of the services supplied to the business.
The accuracy of the SLAs, SLRs and SLTs and the overall success of SLM
is very dependent on the quality of the service portfolio and service catalogue
and their contents because they provide the detailed information on the
services to be managed within the SLM process.
With that said the purpose of the SLM process is to certify that
all current and planned IT services are delivered in accordance with agreed
achievable targets. This is normally
accomplished by SLM through a continuing cycle of negotiations, agreements, in conjunction
with constant monitoring, reporting on and reviewing of actual outcomes with
comparison to expected or agreed targets.
The following are detailed objectives of SLM:
- Define, document, agree, monitor, measure, report on and review the level of IT services provided and when necessary initiate corrective action.
- In conjunction with Business Relationship Management, provide and improve the relationship and communications with all stakeholders.
- Ensure that specific, meaningful and measureable targets are established for all IT services.
- Monitor and improve customer satisfaction through the practice of continuous quality improvement of services delivered.
- Certify that both the the customer and the service provider have a clear and unambiguous expectation of the level of service to be delivered.
- Confirm that even when all agreed targets are being met, the levels of services delivered are subject to proactive, cost effective continual improvement.
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