We’re working together with a long-time user of TeamHeadquarters, who will be using SLAs to solve business issues and who has recently developed a business strategy that establishes IT as a core organizational competency.
The Business Issues
Internal business issues
The strategy of the company has software, databases, and processes that heavily rely on systems and IT personnel for high availability and accuracy.
Not all systems, software, processes and staff are equal — some are more critical than others. Applying an SLA to these essential services provides helpdesk operators and personnel the information they require to prioritize support activities and service requests.
Customer business issues
As I said, not all systems, software, processes, and staff are equally essential. Customers service requests receive a priority based on their essential nature and assigned the appropriate SLA. Now the client expectations are set. Providing the customer with the measurements, and access to their service request progress through the TeamHeadquarters portal aids in understanding the level of service they’re receiving and whether the SLA is being satisfied.
SLA Measures and KPIs
By setting SLAs on all services based on their essential nature, the client can focus the efforts of IT on high priority, strategy enabling activities.
For each SLA Measurements and KPIs have been declared and agreed upon by both customers and IT. The primary measure is time: time to resolve, and average time to close.
Factoring in weekends and off-hours into the SLA time measures was critical to the success of the strategy. If the “ball” is in the client’s court, the SLA clock stops; if the request arrives after hours, the clock doesn’t start until the beginning of the next business day. These types of rules are critical to the development of realistic expectations.
IT support staff are measured on their average time to close, the total time to close support requests, SLA violations. These statistics become tools to improve service delivery and train staff.
Customer Engagement through a Self-Serve Portal
Customers become aware of KPIs and the real measurement of support. Clients have access to Service Level KPIs which provides a perspective of the service they’re receiving.
The customer and their executive team determined that TeamHeadquarters is a critical system that supports the IT strategy of their organization. SLAs support both the client and the IT helpdesk.
