Service Level Agreements (SLAs) define expectations among two or more parties regarding service quality, priorities, and responsibilities. While SLAs have traditionally been a contract between a Service Provider and an Enterprise customer, the expanding value chain for new-generation services has made SLAs important for a myriad of partnerships.
To compete successfully, companies must proactively manage the quality of their services. Since provisioning of those services is dependent on multiple partners, management of partner services SLAs become critical for success. SLAs are used to define and manage expectations among partners for performance, customer care, billing, service provisioning, and other critical business areas.
SLA Management can also be used to assess predefined penalties when SLA parameters, such as failure to meet performance, timeline, or cost requirements, are not met.
The methodology and tools developed by the SLA Management project have been designed to manage service quality throughout the customer experience lifecycle. This means managing service quality beyond the in-use phase of the lifecycle to include point of sales, provisioning, in-use phase and service termination aspects. It should also be noted that the in-use phase includes service components such as customer services and billing.
The SLA Management team reviews various topics directly related to Service Level Agreements and Quality Of Service management. Under this umbrella, the Team develops application notes that address new emerging telecommunication technologies and services based on the principles and concepts of contemporary SLA/QoS management.