Providing Affordable IT Management to SME's Service Level Management - Where do I start ?
For all female readers, please do not switch off immediately as this is not the ramblings of a chauvinistic madman….
Prompted by a conversation with my wife about independence and what would happen if something happened in our relationship, I started to consider all of the things she does for me. The obvious ones such as dealing with the kids school issues, ironing my shirts, keeping the house nice and tidy were easy. Then the less obvious ones kicked in such as decieding the general décor and furniture, buying my clothes and planning the weekly meals. I have to point out that it is not all one sided! I deal with all of the family finances, ensure that her car is taxed, MOT’d and insured and generally take care of the DIY around the house.
So what has that go to do with IT and more importantly this blog for small businesses? Well sometimes I don’t want to put that shelf up and will find every excuse NOT to do it on the weekend mentioned. I would like all of my shirts ironed on a Sunday ready for the week ahead and not have to wait each morning whilst a new one is ironed. What we have is the starting point of a “SERVICE CATALOGUE” and “SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENTS”.
We could quite easily list all of the tasks we undertake in our relationship and around that build a set of expectations on when and how they will get done. If we really wanted to avoid disagreements, we could set “Key Performance Indicators” around the tasks (like I would only like one crease on the top of my shirt sleeves not two!)
So now we have a basic understanding of the key principles of Service Level Management:
• Service Catalogue – a list of all of the IT services used by your business. Examples could be e-mail, internet access, PC’s, dedicated applications, printing
• Service Level Agreements – a document that explains how the service is delivered, during what hours and to what standard. This agreement is normally made between the receiver of the service and the supplier
So what should you do and why?
Step 1 -Create a basic spreadsheet with the following column’s
• Service Name
• Number of users
• Hours/days of use
• Supplier providing support
Complete it by starting to list all of the services you use, then complete the other columns of information
Step 2 – For each named service, identify which ones you have support contracts for. For those with support contracts – do not read the contract at this point! Write out what level of support you need and think about how many times the system has failed (if possible try to identify the number of hours/part hours over the last 6 months).
Once you have that information, review your contact against your needs and if availability figures are quoted, check these against your real service availability. For those without support contracts once again write out what level of support you actually need (eg do you have a payroll application you bought from PC world 3 years ago and if it went wrong, how quickly would you like it fixed – forget about the how and who for now….)
This exercise will identify two things:
1) You will get an understanding of what is important to your business
2) You will understand how your current suppliers are performing and if their cover is sufficient as well as spotting your weak areas of unsupported services
What you do next is driven by how much risk you are prepared to take against how much you want to invest in having your services covered. But even if you don’t do anything, at least you are aware of your IT services and the level of support you need/have. If you would like some additional information to help you write your service catalogue, contact us quoting "SL1 - Writing your service catalogue"
2nd Dec 2009
Click here for details of our FREE business healthcheck and join the rest of the companies using IT Service Management.