Service Level Agreement (SLA) Management Software

SLA Management Software

CENTRE’s Contract Management system has been designed and built with the flexibility to meet the demanding needs of government and private enterprises. The Contract module not only stores Contract specifics, but maintains source documents, assets and dependencies, historical usage and costs, and hierarchical SLA provisioning.

Key features of Contract and SLA Management Module

The CENTRE Contracts Module supports four distinct SLA metrics:

• A Contract-wide umbrella SLA defining Response, On-Site and Repair in SLA hours with user definable alerts for time lapses,
• An Item-Type SLA, (such as servers, routers, etc), where specific types of assets can be allocated unique SLA requirements,
• A Custom SLA where SLA requirements can vary by geographic location,
• A Configuration Item SLA where SLA requirements can be defined for specific Configuration Items, (such as a network, a workstation response time, etc.)

As well, this module supports a tightly coupled interface with all other CENTRE modules enabling the collection and processing of capacity and event management records.

This feature provides support for unlimited SLA including “Type”, “Custom” & specific Asset/ Configuration Item SLA.

F.A.Q. about Service Level Management

1. Does the tool support the management of Service Level Agreements?
Yes. SLA’s are supported and managed via the Contract record, Item Type, SLA Location Code, and CI (Configuration Item).

2. Does the tool support the management and monitoring of Operational Level Agreements and supplier performance metrics?
Yes. OLA’s may be monitored, tracked, and reported on by using the ad-hoc reporting system to interrogate the contract CI’s ‘Up-time’ and ‘Availability Percentage’ values, or, reports may be created to identify missed OLA’s in response, on-site, and, resolution areas.

Supplier Performance: Supplier performance is gathered by entering the performance measurement on each incident and purchase order within CENTRE. To ensure a performance value is entered, the system will not permit the closure or completion of transactions until an entry is made. This measurement is aggregated to an overall average for the contractor or vendor. Once a contractor or vendor is rated as failing, they may longer be used for services. The manager of the contractors or vendors must manually reinstate failed accounts, thus, compelling an evaluation of the failed supplied or vendor.

3. Does the tool facilitate the automation and management of service level targets in terms of automated business rules, alerts, escalations and notifications?
Yes. Service level target rules and notification is accomplished by identifying a percentage of elapsed time used in the SLA window. A monitoring alert is triggered and sent to selected parties for escalation.
Other custom alerts may be created using the Potential Problem Management System (PPMS). A scan (hourly, daily, weekly, or other customized period) may be established to notify a user or group of users when an SLA type has breached. The scan may be customized with infinite flexibility using the Ad-hoc reporting system.

4. Does the tool facilitate integration with monitoring and event management tools to enable triggering of service support related actions based on established thresholds?
Yes. There are several ways to facilitate these actions:
Using the ‘Notification Events’ subsystem, notifications pertaining to service levels may be triggered based upon threshold evaluation. Email notifications may be sent to users, stakeholders and any other individuals as desired.
Using the PPMS system, a user may define thresholds which work in conjunction with its associated Ad-hoc scan to notify appropriate individuals or groups. The PPMS scan may search for particular incident types (disk usage alert or other event type) and notify particular individuals or groups. These individuals or groups may perform service support actions as necessary.

5. Does the tool manage the scheduling of the review cycle and renewal of SLAs, OLAs and Supplier Contracts?
Yes. Review cycle schedules may be managed using the Ad-hoc reporting system or the Contract Expiry alert notification. Review cycle reports for Contract reviews (expired or nearing expiration dates) may be created via an Ad-hoc report.

6. Does the tool facilitate the automation and monitoring of supplier contracts and agreements with third party suppliers?
Yes. As depicted in the previous question, an ad-hoc report can filter out expired or nearing expiration contracts and produce reports specific to user needs.

7. Does the tool automate service availability and performance threshold monitoring against defined Service Level Agreements?
Yes. Service availability and up-time hours are automatically maintained on the CI. Using these values, an ad-hoc report may be created by contact to use in the comparison to defined SLA agreements.

8. Does the tool facilitate reporting against SLA requirements? For example, reports of service achievements against SLAs, reports of reasons for Service Level Agreement breaches and report of service exceptions against SLAs.
Yes. Using the SLA Performance Report, SLA performance is list by entered date ranges.
Reports of service breaching and service exceptions against SLA requirements can be created using the Ad-hoc reporting system.
A customized table with common explanations of SLA exceptions and SLA breaches will be used to group and make these records reportable. The entry of additional information beyond the table of explanations will permit the recording of additional details.

— Integration Criteria —

1. Does the tool’s use of terms and definitions align with ITIL terms and definitions?
Yes. The tool has been certified as ITIL compliant for Incident, Change, Configuration Item, and Problem Management.

Incident Management: Does the tool support Incident Management by automating, escalation, and notification activities based on response and resolution targets?
Yes. Incidents are under SLA management and automatically report (notify) on SLA response and resolution targets

Service Catalog Management: Does the tool support the management of the Service Portfolio by tracking and reporting on service attributes and levels published in the Service Catalog?
Yes. Service levels published within the Service Portfolio and Service Catalog are tracked on the incident, fulfillment, and event management records and may be reported by attribute and service level using the flexible abilities within the ad-hoc reporting system

Change Management: Does the tool provide SLA access to Change Management? For example, access to Service Level Agreement details, implementation windows, change blackout periods, and availability requirements.
Yes. Service level agreement details, implementation windows, change blackout periods, and availability requirements may be documents, special instructions, or, remarks stored to the Contract record.

Configuration Management: Does the tool facilitate the linkage of unique service levels to people records or Configuration Items?
Yes. SLA’s are supported and managed to the CI level.