LSA Monitoring

The monitoring of SLAs is often sadly neglected. Usually this work is outsourced to a service provider – with only moderate success.

In many cases the monitoring of SLAs at the interface between outsourcer and client today is not especially time-consuming or expensive. The reason is that defining the SLAs is often kept simple.

Today 90% of dialog response-times takes less than one second and 99.5% availability. And then there are servicing-times of between eight and 18 hours which most SLAs describe. The related reporting is not overly demanding, especially since the detailing for a precise calculation of even the simplest SLAs is often missing.

Yet, in view of increasingly complex SAP landscapes and the increasingly greater dependence of firms on availability and service-quality, requirements change.

Forward-thinking IT strategists – including with the providers – develop more complex, applications-based SLAs such as:

  • response-times based on transactional application, the portal and lines;
  • throughput-times for procedures such as preparing a quote, including verifying availability within 10 minutes;
  • availability of applications beyond SAP systems limits;
  • others.

As well, SLAs must be continuously and permanently enhanced, so the agreement with the service provider should only define a starting point, including a procedure by which SLAs can be further enhanced.

Otherwise, the required alteration to the agreement may quickly turn out to be a commercial disaster after connecting to another company-critical application if the outsourcer is paid for every minor alteration.

This is why a large number of our clients have not given the job of measuring SLAs, reporting and enhancing to service providers; instead they have transferred it to VMS.

By using our measuring software VMS Datacollector, we also put your reporting on a solid basis. The reports based on it produce a uniform source of information for all parties involved.

Discussions on quality take on a new level of relevance due to the unaccustomed degree of transparency. And use of the VMS early-warning system means that problems are not discussed when they have become a threat but as soon as they make their presence known. Avoiding problems makes happy users – and happy service providers, too. Which, incidentally, is why service providers hand these jobs over directly to us.