Service Level Management Objectives

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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