02 Jul What are Service Level Agreements (SLA)
Get what you pay for…
Most enterprise information technology environments can be large monolithic unwieldy creatures designed over the years with the best of intentions in response to both business and operational requirements. The resulting business processes rely on segmented pockets of expertise to manage and troubleshoot systems in accordance to Service Level Agreements (SLA) established to meet the defined business and operational requirements of the business.
SLAs are both internal and customer facing service delivery benchmarks which in theory guarantee Quality of Service (QoS) tied to Key Performance Indexes (KPI) to deliver a minimum level of service to the end user. Tiered problem escalation processes are set up to support and guide the end user through a problem resolution process initiated by issuance of a problem ticket initiated at a help desk or automated service centre system.
Mean Time to Repair is the time it takes on average to effect repair to a service. Often SLAs are attached to financial and performance penalties which are designed to guarantee a class of service. This means SLAs, QoS and KPIs are extremely important business and operational performance metrics as the stakes are high in today’s age of customer service, where brand loyalty is at risk and reputations’ easily tarnished or even ruined by series of keystrokes in social media.
No Comments