Managing Outsourcers – Service Level Management
Service level management consists of defining, measuring and managing service levels to conform to the contractual requirements.
SLA’s establish the “metrics” that govern the delivery of the managed services. In case of a call center, the time to response (“number of rings before the call is answered”) is a typical SLA. In information technology, server availability (“uptime”) is a key SLA. Every managed service has its own parameters.
When designing SLA’s, enterprise customers should consider the impact of having the outsourcing service provider drive its quality of service solely to the contractual SLA’s. The terms and conditions of the agreement should therefore integrate with the SLA’s to fill in gaps and adopt policies.