A service level management process ensures that all IT services provided to customers meet agreed-upon standards of quality. It is about ensuring that Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are in place, that they are fulfilled and that service levels are tracked and reported on.
It is crucial to have the right tools in place to achieve all of this. The processes and systems that determine service levels are outsourced to third party companies. It is therefore vital to understand how to manage them in the context of your own SLM processes.
The first step to set up an SLM process is to determine what services are crucial to the business and setting reasonable measures of the success of the process. This includes factors such as efficiency, user base and design aspects. It is essential to choose the technology expertise – a company specializing in specific platforms may be able commit to higher levels of performance than a generalised service provider.
After the SLA targets are set the teams need to create an action plan to meet them. This typically involves implementing systems that track progress and alert the team automatically when there are problems in meeting the goals.
Furthermore, a strong SLM process will incorporate continuous improvement processes. They will allow teams to analyze the data they collect, and then find ways of improving the processes that cause them problems. For instance, if an NOC service is regularly missing its SLA for answering phone calls within 30 seconds It should be possible to pinpoint the reason for why this is happening, and correct it.
http://www.slm-info.org/2020/04/17/service-level-management-slm-benefits/