Service Level Management (SLM) is a critical component within the IT Service Management (ITSM) framework, specifically as a part of the five key elements in the ITIL* Service Delivery area. Its role is pivotal in structuring, defining, and agreeing on the necessary service levels for business operations.

SLM is essential in creating Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and Service Level Objectives (SLOs), as well as in determining the costs of service delivery. Its primary focus is to design, monitor, and manage the agreed service levels to ensure that the quality of IT services meets business operation requirements.

Today, however, SLM has expanded to include more than just SLA management. It now fundamentally involves understanding customer business requirements, establishing appropriate expectations, and consistently meeting the established SLOs.

By adopting SLM processes, IT teams can deliver the agreed service levels more efficiently and cost-effectively. These processes help define the responsibilities and roles of both the business and IT departments, thereby promoting smooth, reliable business operations.

It's important to note that business units, not solely the IT department, bear the responsibility of justifying the required service levels to senior management in order to support their respective business processes. SLM integrates continuous improvement procedures to ensure that any changes in business requirements are promptly reflected in IT services. This guarantees a continuous alignment of IT services with the evolving needs of the business.

Be sure to drill deeper into SLM in our other guides:

• NOC Service Level Agreements: A Guide to Service Level Management
• NOC Service Level Reporting: Basics, Best Practices and Examples 

3Service Level Management Activities

Let's briefly unpack the activities that comprise SLM today:

• Identifying business requirements
  This involves close communication with business units to understand their specific needs and expectations, including what IT services they require, when they require them, and the desired quality of these services.
• Establishing Scope of Services
  Here, the specific services, their delivery timelines, operating hours, recovery mechanisms, and performance standards are defined. These aspects help establish clear expectations for the service provider and customer.
• Translating business requirements into IT requirements
  This process involves converting the needs of the business into specific technical requirements that IT can implement and manage. This ensures IT services align with and support business needs.
• Performing a capability gap analysis
  A gap analysis involves comparing current service capabilities with the business requirements to identify any gaps that need to be addressed. This helps to ensure that IT services can meet the needs of the business.
• Determining service costs
  This activity involves assessing all costs associated with providing the services (such as labor, technology, and infrastructure costs), ensuring that service goals can be achieved at a price that the business considers affordable.
• Drafting, negotiating, and refining SLAs
  SLAs are formal contracts between the IT service provider and the customer, outlining the service scope, performance standards, responsibilities, and pricing. Drafting and negotiating SLAs involves working closely with business units to ensure the agreement meets their needs and obtaining approval from all parties.
• Implementing SLAs
  Once the SLA has been agreed upon, it's implemented. This may involve configuring IT systems, training staff, and communicating the terms of the SLA to all relevant parties.
• Measuring SLA/SLO performance
  This involves monitoring and measuring the performance of the services against the standards set out in the SLA/SLO, reporting on these results, and adjusting service delivery as necessary to ensure continuous improvement. Regular reporting helps to ensure transparency and that all parties are aware of the service performance.

4Implementing Service Level Management

Implementing SLM involves a series of steps that require careful planning, execution, and monitoring.

Here’s a high-level look at how implementation works step-by-step.

1. Identify and gather service requirements

The first step in implementing SLM is to identify the service requirements of the business units or customers. This involves engaging with stakeholders to understand their needs and expectations, the business outcomes they want to achieve, and the IT services required to support these outcomes. This understanding forms the basis for defining and designing the IT services.

2. Establish IT services

Once the service requirements are identified, the next step is to define and document which specific IT services will be provided to meet those requirements. This involves outlining the scope, features, quality, and performance standards of each service. 

3. Establish service levels

Service levels define the expected performance of an IT service. These targets should be aligned with the business requirements identified in the first step and should be measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.

4. Develop SLAs and SLOs

Again, an SLA is the contractual agreement between service providers and clients outlining the level and quality of services that will be provided. An SLO is an agreement between service providers and clients outlining the level and quality of services provided. These aren’t contractually binding and don’t include penalties. SLOs tend to be the component parts of SLAs.

5. Monitor and report on service performance

Once the SLAs and SLOs are in place and service is live, the next step is to continuously monitor the performance of the IT services against the agreed-upon service levels. This involves tracking KPIs, preparing service level reports, and providing these reports to the relevant stakeholders, ideally through regular reporting sessions—not just “as needed.”

Here at INOC for example, our reporting criteria are exhaustive—painting a complete picture of service delivery across all its dimensions:

• Review tickets, incidents, and escalations
• Review chronic alarms and incidents
• Coordinate maintenance calendar
• Report on service and operations metrics
• Contractor assessments of performance
• Forecast planned activities
• Review quantity and causes for NOC support activities
• Identify root causes and preventive actions
• Review client escalations and open items
• Review staffing and proficiency levels
• Validate assumptions for contract
• Identify and mitigate risks within infrastructure and operations
• Review previous action items and status
  
  

6. Manage relationships with all stakeholders

Successful SLM also involves managing relationships with customers and stakeholders. This includes managing customer expectations, communicating effectively about service performance, and ensuring customer satisfaction.

Here at INOC, QA/QC is a dedicated function of our NOC services. Our quality control measures keep most concerns off everyone’s radar entirely. We pull large samples of both specific and random tickets to understand how they were created, worked, and closed to learn from successes, identify opportunities for improvement, and understand any potential impact on service.

We also evaluate team-to-client interactions to ensure each communication is professional, efficient, and actionable for both parties. Our dedicated quality team evaluates adherence to procedures, quality of work delivered, response times for notifications and escalations, and a variety of other criteria that factor into service. Each lesson, large and small, is applied to continuously improve our workforce, our platform, and our processes so we can pass the value onto our customers.

7. Run a Continuous Improvement Plan

While SLM never ends, the final ongoing component in implementation is the continuous improvement plan. This involves identifying opportunities for improving the IT services and the SLM process, implementing improvement actions, and monitoring the results to ensure that the improvements are effective.

IT environments are anything but static. We work with all of our customers to identify changing business needs and do everything we can to ensure satisfaction. That includes ongoing QC/QA analysis and reporting as well as in-depth quarterly business reviews to look back and forward.

6Taking Service Level Management to the Next Level

Here at INOC, we complement standard KPI reporting, which includes monthly SLA measurements, with an array of additional SLOs to better measure performance and keep both teams aligned on success.

In our view, limiting reporting to just a handful of rigid service levels rarely tells the full story about the quality of NOC service being provided. Limited reporting also ignores important operational signals that serve as inputs for continual improvement. 

We offer four SLA options with several SLOs within each SLA, as shown below to provide a real-world example.

There are also several additional SLOs we maintain described below. Keep in mind that variances in networks, types of alerts, vendors, contractors, and other factors can impact these definitions.

So, how does this approach to SLM translate into tangible value for a client?

Put simply, it drives a constant state of continual improvement. We want to take every opportunity to make processes and activities as efficient as possible. That means closely examining each component of an SLO, spotting those opportunities, and for example, adding automation to make incremental improvements that contribute to greater availability and less downtime.

With this expanded approach to SLM, each monthly report we produce presents both precise reporting around key service levels as well as a big-picture perspective that can inform proactive enhancements and optimization. (Read our guide to SLM reporting here.)