Implementation of service level management

A great first step is to develop a service catalogue. The catalogue is a written statement of IT services, their default service levels and any options that attach to the services. Many IT organizations, when first attempting this task, are often surprised at the wide variety of services, service levels and option that exist. Developing the service catalogue presents a great opportunity for the IT organization to rationalize, standardize and consolidate the service provides. This can significantly reduce the management and support overheads the organization has.

The next step in implementation is to identify which customers use what services. When this is done a Service Level agreement (SLA) structure can be created. SLA agreements can be service based, where a standard agreement is developed for each service provided and customers can select which services they want,

or customer based, where you have a single agreement with each customer that includes all of the services they use.
Agreement can also be multi-tiered, which is a combination. The key is to decide what service should be standard across all customers and what services should be tailored to meet the specific needs of each customer. For ease of management, the Help Desk or Support component of any service Levels should be common across all customers, although some customers or services may attract a premium level of service, this should be exception based. Typically, business specific applications may attract varying service level in terms of transaction response times, throughput, hours of service etc. However, where possible, it would be preferred if applications could be grouped into services types or tiers.

Planning the process of service level management

There are several key questions that need to be answered when planning for service level management.

• What service do we provide?
• Who are our customers and what services does each customer use?
• What are the key elements or what elements of each service should be measured?
• How will I measure these things?
• What is my current level of service for each service?
• Do I have contracts or OLA’s in place for each element of the service to be delivered?
• Do the performance tagets in the contracts or OLA’s support the service levels I am required to deliver to my customer?

when each of these questions has been answered and any rectification activities performed you are ready to begin implementing service level management.

What is a Service level Agreement (SLA)?

An SLA is a formal negotiated document that defines in quantitative terms the service being offered to a customer. The agreement should encompass all service elements that make up the service being provided, for example, an application service would be made up of elements such as the service desks response and restoration targets, application performance, network performance, end to end availability of the service and perhaps some output based service components.

Any metrics included in an SLA must be capable of being measured on a regular and consistent basis. Without this, service achievement will always remain subjective.

SLAs should be renegotiated whenever a business service is subject to significant change in regards to the business requirements or the service delivery capability of the IT organization.

Scope of Service Level Management

Service level management should encompass all IT services provided by the IT Organization. The service Level manager should ensure that all services have appropriate Operation Level Agreements (OLAs) with internal IT Suppliers and contracts with external suppliers in place to underpin the services delivered.

An important initial task is to distinguish between services, functions and processes. This is not an easy task; however, the following definitions are a good place to start. Services are what the IT organization’s customers consume directly and are typically business related. A function is a set of processes and activities performed to deliver a service and a process is a way or means of performing activities or tasks. A help desk or service desk is a tricky example. An IT Help Desk in a bank is not a service it is a function provided to deliver a service. The banking application is the service. However, if this Help Desk was outsourced then the Help Desk function provided by the supplier is also the service it provides. In both cases, Incident Management is the process followed to deliver the service or function.

So, careful thought must be given to what you define as the services you provide to your customers.

Goal of Service Level Management

The goal of service level management is to maintain and improve IT service quality through a constant cycle of agreeing, monitoring and reporting upon IT service achievement and the instigation of actions to eradicate poor service. Service level management acts as the key customer interface into the IT organization and, where poor service is identified, acts as the customer's agent in driving service improvement activities.

Definition of Service Level management

Service Level Management is the process of defining, agreeing, documenting and then managing the levels IT services to be provided to a customer. The levels of service provided should be cost justified against the business benefit they bring. Establishing service levels can be viewed as akin to creating the marketing plan for the IT department or for an IT organization.

There are 4 key words in this definition of service level management: defining, agreeing, documenting and managing. Defining what service are provided is important because an IT organization, whether providing internal or external services, should understand what services its customers require and to what level. It should understand what its own capabilities are. Agreeing is important because both the buyer and supplier of the service must agree on what is to be provided. If they do not then neither party will be satisfied. Documenting is a critical step as it demonstrates a commitment from both parties. Management too is important must work actively to ensure that it can fulfil its end of the bargain.

Cultural Aspects and Excellence in Customer Service (part 2)

What is culture?
Culture refers to the values and belief of the organization – the normal way of doing things. It can be referred to as the ‘personality’ of an organization. Component parts of the culture include:

• The way authority is exercised and people rewarded.
• Method of communication.
• The degrees of formality required in working hours and dress and the extent to which procedures and regulations are enforced.

Procedures, therefore, should support the culture and not govern or influence it.

What is service culture?
The idea of a service culture can be summed up in one true saying – “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care”.

A Service culture means an orientation towards helping people. The technical quality of the work is important – that’s precisely why a service culture is important. Without it, the value of technology can remain largely untapped in organizations.

By taking the time and effort to listen to customers it is possible to understand the service being provided from their perspective. The key point about providing service is attention to detail; to go that little bit further to ‘delight’ the customer.

What is customer service?
Customer service is:

• Providing the right quality of services to meet the customers’ requirement
• Help customers make the best use of these services
• Being receptive to customers’ needs and problem and provide them with effective support at all times.

To achieve customer service requires effective communication and cooperation between the IT department and the business.

The primary reason the IT department exists is to keep their customers productive. It is therefore imperative to attain a customer profile. The following questions can be asked to determine the ‘look’ of an IT department’s customer profile:

• Who are they?
• How many are there?
• Where are they?
• What technology do they use?
• What do they use it for?
• How often and when do they use it?
• How IT literate are they?
• How IT friendly are they?
• How controlled is customers’ environment?
• What are the customers’ priorities?
• What does the customer want?

Cultural Aspects and Excellence in Customer Service (part 1)

It would appear obvious that, in order to prosper, a business should have customer satisfaction as its prime objective. Unfortunately, until recently, many IT departments have been too obsessed with technology to recognize that they have customer at all.

Due to pressure in recent years, IT departments have become more aware of their role in supporting the IT departments of the business. IT departments are now raising the priority of customer satisfaction from being merely a ‘nice to have’ to ‘essential’. They are also aware that the way in which the service delivered is dependent on the people delivering the service.

A customer is someone who deals with a trader and habitually purchases form them. A service is an act performed for the benefit or advance of a person, institution or cause. Customer service therefore is concerned with performing acts that benefit customers in a way that will encourage them to purchase services again and again.

Process Improvement and Service Improvement Program
Organization should not be over ambitious when implementing service management. Most organizations will already have elements established and in operation. Therefore, the service management implementation activity is actually one of process improvement.

Overall process improvement is an interactive activity and would normally consist of the following stages:

• Process improvement definition
  
• Communication
  
• Planning
  
• Implementation
  
• Review and audit
  

The objective of process improvement should be to improve the service, hence, a service improvement program (SIP). A SIP is an activity that should support the corporate missions and organization’s business objectives. It is an ongoing program of implementing service improvement initiatives.

A SIP has no end date – improving the service is an ongoing initiative that has senior management commitment and is continually moving from good practice to best practice. A SIP is made up of a discrete series of project, which have clear objectives.

These series of projects follow the process improvement stages listed above with a clear start and end date.
A SIP should at a minimum, consist of the following steps:

• Assess current practice and processes against ITIL best practice (gap analysis)
  
• Concentrate on problem areas such as ‘where the most pain is being felt’ by the business.
  
• Build on existing good practice rather than throwing everything away and starting again.
  

The key thing is that a SIP must be seen as a senior management initiative with support from the top and be an ongoing program made up of a series of projects with the objective to move to best practice.

Management Commitment
Management commitment is about motivating and leading by example. Management must support the use of best practice openly and demonstrably. It has to start from the top with a total quality approach to leadership. Any attempt to alter an organization’s culture must originate from its leaders. The vision and mission statement must be endorsed by senior management and communicated to all employees. All staff must realize that, either directly or indirectly, they play an important part in delivering service and therefore, in the organization’s success.

The Benefit of Adopting ITIL

ITIL offers a systematic, professional approach to the management of IT service provision.

Adopting its guidance can provide benefit to the IT services such as:

• customer satisfaction with IT services which meet their needs
  
• Reduced risk of not being able to meet the business requirement for IT services
  
• Reduced cost in developing procedures and practices within organization
  
• Better communication and information flows between IT staff and customers
  
• Assurance to the IT Director that staff are provided with appropriate standards and guidance - Greater productivity and best use of skills and experience
  
• A quality approach to IT services provision

There are also benefits to the customer of IT services such as:

• Reassurance that IT services are provided in accordance with documented procedures, which can be audited
  
• The ability to depend upon IT services, enabling the customer to meet business objectives
  
• The provision of clearly defined contact points within IT services for enquiries or discussion about changing requirements
  
• The knowledge that detailed information is produced to justify charges for IT services and to provide feedback from mentoring of service level agreements
  
• ITIL emphasis the importance of providing IT services to satisfy business needs, in a cost effective manner. Many IT service provider are attempting to become more customer oriented, demonstrating their contribution to the business. ITIL can help organizations make this transition.
  

Adapting ITIL to your Organization
Organizations are encouraged to adapt the guidance to suit their needs but are cautioned against omitting activities without consideration since IT service management is a set of integrated and co-ordinated functions.

Organizations are likely to gain most benefit in the longer term from implementing all of the disciplines rather than some discrete disciplines. The disciplines are inter-related requiring information flow between them. Without full implementation some important activities and information will be missing.

Function vs processes vs procedures
The 2 core sets of ITIL, Service support & service delivery, are made up of 11 disciplines, 10 are processes and 1 is a function (service desk).

The service desk is a function consisting of analysts, the service desk manager & other stakeholder, who follow a set of processes, which are documented in a procedure manual. This paragraph attempts to demonstrate the difference between a function, a process & a procedure.

A process defines what is to be achieved. A procedure defines how the objectives are to achieved. A function is over-arching and contributes to the execution of the processes.

What is ITIL?

Strictly speaking, ITIL is no more than an acronym for the IT Infrastructure Library; the books of guidance developed by the CCTA in the late 1980's. However, ITIL has come to represent rather more than the library of books alone, embracing the wider approach including:

• Training
  
• Qualifications
  
• Consultancy
  
• Software tools
  
• User Groups (itSMF)
  

ITIL origins
The CCTA is the UK government's Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency and has been in existence for 25 years. In developing ITIL, it was fulfilling its role to document and promulgate best practice in the field of IT and encourage UK Government IT directorates to adopt that best practice. In 2001 the CCTA became part of the Office of Government Commerce or OGC.

ITIL was initially developed and is still owned by the CCTA. The primary objective was to publish a set of comprehensive, consistent and coherent codes of best practice for IT service management, promoting business effectiveness in the use of information systems. CCTA's customer base was central government, but it was soon clear that the requirements of central government for advice in this field were no different from general needs of organizations; public or private sector, large or small, centralized or distributed, local or international.

There was also, from the beginning, a declared secondary objective - to encourage the private sector to develop supporting services and products such as training, consulting and tools to support the guidance documented in the IT Infrastructure Library.

ITIL - Best Practice
ITIL was created in recognition of organizations ever-increasing dependency on IT. Without IT most business cannot function; without quality IT services they cannot function well. Organizations therefore need quality IT service provision.

Most organizations spend more on IT service provision, including maintenance of those services, than on IT development projects. It is imperative that users of those IT services obtain value for money. The services must, of course, be matched to business needs and customer requirement as they change; they must also be provided economically, making optimum use of scarce IT skills. There is continual pressure in many organizations to reduce cost while maintaining or improving the IT services.

When the ITIL project was initiated and scooped there was no comprehensive guidance available to advise on what needed to be done to provide efficient and effective IT services.
ITIL remains the only comprehensive, non-proprietary, publicly available set of guidance, making it a unique and valuable product.

ITIL documents best practice for IT service management, this being determined through the involvement of industry experts, consultants and practitioners. ITIL provides a systematic approach to help organizations deliver well-managed IT services in the face of many constraints such as lack of finance and time, more exacting and unpredictable business requirements and user demands, and the growing complexity of IT.