Basics of Service Level Management according to ITIL
Service means,
to see the whole business through the eyes of the customer.
[Axel Haitzer]
Contents
1 Prerequisites and goals
2 Basics of Service Level Management according to ITIL
3 Structure within EcholoN
3.1 Service contracts
3.2 Service level agreements
3.3 Services
3.4 Service catalogues
3.5 Service accounts and bookings
3.6 Business Services
4 Evaluation options
5 Other aspects
1 Prerequisites and goals
Prerequisites
- Basics of operations (triggers, requesters, priorities and their timing)
Objectives
- To provide a solid basic knowledge of:
o Service Level Management
o SLA
o Services
o Service accounts
o KPIs
2 Service Level Management
... is an ITIL process discipline and is used to define, monitor and optimise information technology (IT) services.
Primary goals:
- To ensure that IT services are permanently in accordance with the gesch. expectations ('Service Level Objectives')
o Solve problems promptly
o Reduce and avoid downtime of services and equipment
- Process the framework in the form of written agreements
- Managing the relationship between IT management and the customer / partner.
Tasks:
- Managing the services (see below) and the service catalogue (see below).
- Defining requirements and their parameters
- Agreeing SLAs (Service Level Agreements) between the service provider and the customer
- Agreeing KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for compliance with SLAs, the (KPIs)
- Monitoring compliance with KPIs -> being able to detect or avoid impending violations at an early stage
- Reports and their distribution to stakeholders
- Optimisation and adaptation of existing contracts
- Develop + manage supporting contracts OLAs (Operational Level Agreement) / UCs (underpinning contracts for subcontractors and suppliers)
The processing of management tasks can also be done entirely with EcholoN :)
Points of contact for the processor
- During the process entry
Values from the SLA are marked orange:
- In the course of transaction processing
- Regarding times / escalations
Since SLAs directly influence priorities / working times, the user notices as a marginal aspect that he has less / more time available for processing his cases.
Escalation levels and notifications can also have noticeable deviations.
- When booking working hours / account bookings
Bookable are all services which are stored in service catalogues AND which are directly linked to the SLA.
3 Structure within EcholoN
3.1 Service contracts
Contract = description of the relationship between 2 contractual partners
= regulates directions and characteristics of the relationship between these partners
e.g. sales contract: Partner A gives Partner B a certain amount for a product or service.
Service contracts, however, are to be seen here like e.g. a guarantee:
A service contract describes the general conditions that are necessary for the maintenance of services and equipment / software etc.
- proactive services such as checking logs / monitoring
- active services such as troubleshooting
-
A service contract contains at least one service level agreement that describes these framework conditions.
3.2 Service level agreements
The most important components of a service contract are the SLAs.
The following contents can occur, for example:
- Availability and quality of a service
- Response time behaviour / data throughput of certain services
- Response time in the event of faults (= the period of time until the work begins / until the first response)
- Recovery time (= the period in which the work must be completed)
- Contractual penalty for permanently defective performance or unsuccessful fault rectification
- Reporting obligation
The parameters that deviate from the standard procedure in EcholoN can be, for example:
- different priority set (and thus reaction, due date and target times)
- different working hours (40h week / 24/7) and holidays
- more, shorter or longer escalation steps and other notifications
- deviating services that are available (see below)
To determine the applicable agreement, the combination of trigger (e.g. business service) and/or requester (organisations / contacts) is used.
In addition, the organisation of the trigger and that of the requester are also analysed.
If several SLAs apply, the level of the SLA set determines which one should be used with priority. The higher the level, the more important the SLA.
If there are still several to choose from after this check, the processor is the final decision-maker.
3.3 Services
Partial services which are used and offered for working on cases for the SLA
- Remote maintenance
- telephone support
- on site
- Mail support
- Check logs
etc.
Services can be grouped into a standard within a service catalogue and/or be available differently per SLA.
Services are available to the end user when expenses are booked.
3.4 Service Catalogues
The scope of all services offered in the standard is grouped in service catalogues. Therefore, this is, so to speak, the portfolio of services offered for processing cases without regard to special arrangements. Service catalogues are available globally for each booking.
Deviating agreements, e.g. for telephone support for certain customers, etc., are mapped in the service level agreements.
3.5 Service accounts and bookings
In addition to a booking of time, it is also possible to assign a service account for each service contract. The currency of an account can be a real currency or a fictitious currency in the form of points.
Manual postings are made to the transactions by the case handler. However, these postings do not consequently reduce the account balance of the respective contract.
The account balance can only be increased and reduced administratively and can also go into the minus range.
(I have not yet seen service accounts in practice).
The agent can make bookings in the booking dialogue:
Attention: The booking does NOT directly debit the service account related to the service contract. There must be a booking process and persons involved,
who overview the bookings manually (via report or similar) and carry them out on the account.
3.6 Business Services
So-called business services are usually used for simpler administration.
These represent a virtual level within the CMDB to roughly describe and name services.
There are many examples of business services, as these are defined per environment and vary from industry to industry / customer to customer etc:
- Mail Service --> the possibility to communicate via eMail.
- Client Service --> the complete client structure (PC, monitors)
- Printing Service --> all printers and their drivers
- Application Service --> software
- Network Service --> the provision of a network structure
- Access Service --> access to the building via NFC / alarm system
etc.
If the hardware devices are used as triggers, they must be assigned to the SLAs by means of imports or manually.
4 reporting options
Reporting
There are extensive evaluation options in
- table and
- diagram form but also
- notification options via e-mail or other
- other automatically created objects.
Examples of evaluations would be, for example:
- Resolution time for business services of a certain CMDB element category and a certain agent group.
- Reaction time of a certain agent group for tasks of certain priorities
- Evaluation for the customer of all cases reported in this month and their response and resolution times
- Evaluation of the downtime of business services for a customer
etc. etc.
For proactive notification regarding service management:
- Account balance of a service contract is about to be exhausted -> Mail to the head of sales.
- Response times almost exceed the framework defined in the SLA -> Mail to the Business Service Manager
- The specified resolution time of an operation is approaching -> Mail to the owner of the operation
etc.etc.
Automated objects:
- for ensuring business services (check monthly ligs)
- The administrative activities in service level management.
Examples:
- Weekly creation of an operation "Check logs" for customer A for business service B
- autom creation of operations for quarterly meetings with customers
- the service contract is about to expire and a new negotiation is necessary -> operation to
etc. etc.
5 further aspects / points of contact
- Override SNV priority" authorisation
If this authorisation is withdrawn, the specified priority from the SLA may not be overridden.
No message appears but only one priority can be selected:
- the objects mentioned above can only be maintained (without detours) via the MMC or, in the best case, imported.
- At present, the selection of services is still not consistently correct only in the "new" booking dialogue. Only the services from the catalogue are included in the "stopwatch dialogue".
