The ITIL Service Level Management process seeks to negotiate, define, and agree, monitor and report on the service levels of customers. It is in close collaboration with other processes, for instance Capacity Management and Availability Management to ensure that services are delivered in a satisfactory level of quality.
In a perfect world the service-level management process begins by determining when and what services are required. This should be coordinated with the IT team and the business. This will help to set reasonable goals, which are feasible and relevant to the business. Teams should also collaborate to determine how these goals are evaluated and what effect this has on the customer experience.
Once these targets have been established, the SLM process should begin by creating agreements with customers as well as defining the service level requirements. This includes describing the services to be provided (including what’s included and what’s not, so there is no room for misunderstanding) in addition to defining escalation protocols and responsibilities, and setting performance metrics. This should be documented in an SLA.
The SLM process should also include a strategy to monitor and report on the level of compliance with the service and should be reviewed regularly to determine if objectives are being met or not. Automated alerting systems are essential for this. SLM should be coordinated between teams to ensure that everyone is aware of what they are accountable for and if they are meeting the agreed upon levels http://www.slm-info.org/2021/07/08/generated-post/ of service.