Do you think IT is capable of meeting all your business needs? Is it successful in measuring your performance against agreed upon goals? How about its capability to measure supplier performance? If all of your answers to these questions are “no,” then it is definitely time for you to take a new approach to IT.
What you need is something that could deliver a straightforward punch to competitors. This is where Service Level Management (SLM) software can help you big time. By essence, it is designed to aid you in identifying service requirements and take care of SLA management, among many others.
This technology – albeit not perfect – is capable of improving business results. Research suggests that it can cut IT costs for about 30 percent while realizing a significant value increase from 10 percent to 15 percent. If you want to measure and improve the overall quality of your IT, you need to consider this software.
Pressure To Do More With Less
Regardless of size, businesses often face different IT challenges. In most cases, however, the small and midsize entities are in great pressure than the large ones. Apparently, these challenges tend to go deeper when compared to areas like budget, tech support, and staff. That is because they go straight to the core of the business: the IT infrastructure.
Let’s say you are an IT manager. Obviously, you are being pressured to alight all IT services with the company’s goals and needs. It is also possible that you are under increased pressure from driving improvements in either profitability or productivity.
Overcoming The IT Challenge
What people usually forget is that effective communication between IT and business is key in overcoming this challenge. This two work hand in hand in order to grasp the needs of the company. But how does IT know and understand what the company needs support to? Well, it is quite simple. It is all about practicing a spontaneous monitoring, reviewing, and improving service performance. Otherwise, the business will not be able to obtain what it truly needs from IT.
Keep in mind, however, that IT is not capable of delivering this task in an efficient manner if all of its management systems are still at a “component” status, let alone being parked at a process level. To put it simply, it cannot do anything if it is monitoring and managing areas (i.e. networks, applications, computers, etc.) discreetly. This is exactly where SLM enters.
SLM To The Rescue
SLM can provide support by optimizing the delivery of all IT services to the business. What is more is that it offers a plethora of benefits from both a business and technical standpoint. From a business perspective, SLM provides important business benefits as a whole. This is by increasing customer satisfaction and retention, as well as the improvement of profits, revenues, and unit productivity.
As for the technical aspect of it, it gives you the ability to define demand, review opportunities, and monitor performance. All of these in order to achieve the much-needed improvements. Moreover, it can help in identifying and resolving misalignments, not to mention its capacity to mitigate weaknesses. In other words, you will have the power to enable an optimal IT service and support for your business.
Proactive Troubleshooting
The software is tailored in a way that it performs the audit of the current infrastructure and workflow of a company. As such, it can quickly identify existing bottlenecks. From there, it provides you with a handful of recommendations, so you can greatly improve the current situation and prevent the possibility of these issues from happening in the near future.
Unlimited Incidents
What you will also love about this technology is that it is developed to offer unlimited incidents. It simply does not have any cap, especially when it comes to SLA-covered incidents. That way, it can just work spontaneously and will not stop until all issues are fixes. Interestingly, the software can notice and pinpoint a repetitive incident appearance. Only then it indicates whether the situation is a problem or merely a bottleneck. Either way, you will appreciate its ability to fix the problem for good rather than sitting there and going for an endless battle. It is better to remove the issue and prevent the consequences right in the first place, is it not?
Other Interesting Benefits It Offers
Apart from the aforementioned, SLM can also optimize the speed of service delivery while increasing the involvement of IT. Basically, it gives the latter link to be part of areas like business planning and improvement, providing support to the company when it comes to monitoring SLAs. In addition, the technology gives you a more competitive edge. Remember that you are living in a day and age where most marketplaces are hotly contested. Industry consolidations, on the other hand, pretty much happen on a constant basis. Meaning, it is your only fuel to survive and thrive in the industry you are in.
Why You Need It
What you really need to keep in mind first is that SLAs are an essential part of your IT vendor contract. It is responsible for pulling together information relating to all of your contracted services, including their agreed-upon reliability and support. It then consolidates all data into a single document. From there, you can highlight expectations, responsibilities, and metrics. So, when an issue or more with the service surfaces, neither of the two parties can play the ignorant game. It just ensures that both sides of the coin could meet halfway, thanks to having the same understanding of needs and/or requirements.
Of course, SLM is not all moonlight and roses. It is an investment that you are going to deal with. But unlike many of its contemporaries, it is a worthwhile investment – one that could really provide you with evidence-based results. As a business, you are absolutely going to compete in the future. It is better to arm yourself now than go to battle unprepared. That is SLM for you right there.
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