A Risk-Based Methodology to Develop and Prepare an Effective Service Level Agreement (SLA) Package to Improve Service and Security Quality

Why Should You Attend:

The way traditional service level agreements (SLAs) have been developed focused on technical lines and has been more oriented towards infrastructure to prepare contracts or agreements, especially when focusing on service outsourcing.

Unfortunately, the past SLAs are not “business goals and objectives oriented” and they are not user-oriented. They are prepared from a bottom-up approach as opposed to from a risk-oriented and enterprise needs’ approach. The SLAs tend to be technically oriented which have no meaning to regular end users. This needs to be changed by means of a risk-based oriented methodology.

This webinar will focus on illustrating a risk-based methodology to develop and prepare an effective service level agreement (SLA) package to improve service and security quality.

Learning Objectives:

• Provide practical information on the development of effective service level agreement (SLA) packages to enhance service quality and security quality.
• Depict a structured methodology on how to prepare business-oriented SLAS that respond to the objectives of the business.
• Depict how to prepare an SLA development matrix that documents the process of SLA development starting from specific threats that would present barriers to achieve the service level objectives, to service level objectives (SLOs) and articulate highly specific technical SLAs intended for technical personnel and user-facing SLAs which business users can relate to measure service quality.
• Provide a sample matrix for the development of one specific SLA which also shows how to document the entire SLA development process.
• Provide practical information that can be used in actual practice at the delegate’s office.

Areas Covered in the Webinar:

1. Background on service level management (SLM) and service level agreements (SLAs) – Definition and explanation of terms used in SLM and SLAs.
2. Service level management and service level agreements are a subset of corporate and enterprise governance – Service level management is a strategic component of running a well-governed business which involves the measurement of service quality level (SQL).
3. Traditional approaches to prepare SLAs and their deficiencies.
4. A structured approach to SLA development and documentation based on a top-down, risk-based approach.
5. How to prepare a matrix or spreadsheet of the major key elements that need to be considered in the development of SLAs: Preparing SLAs that respond to the needs of the business and end-users who will benefit from effective compliance to the SLAs or be adversely impacted by noncompliance to the SLAs package; and difference between user-facing SLAs and technical SLAs.
6. Two main approaches to developing SLAs:

A discussion of two main approaches to designating the service level improvement (SLI) – SLAs oriented to a given function (e.g., IT) and key business process oriented SLA development.

1. Identifying a critical business process that needs service quality improvement.
2. Selecting a specific functional department as an individual target unit for which to develop SLAs to improve service delivery level within its boundaries of operation.
7. Illustration of an SLA development matrix from real-world experience.
8. Description of each of the key elements of the SLA development matrix.
9. Questions

Who Will Benefit:

• CIOs/ CTOs/ IT Managers
• COOs /Operation Managers
• Service Delivery / Shared Service / Customer Service Managers
• Service Purchasing / Procurement Authorities and Contract Managers
• Vendor Management / Project Managers
• Technical Support / Customer Support Managers
• Business Process and Outsourcing Managers
• Business Development Managers
• Service Desk Managers
• Security Professionals
• Quality Improvement Professionals
• Company / Business Owners
• Audit and Compliance Personnel / Risk Managers
• Service sales managers from companies that provide outsourcing services
• Any party responsible for delivering services (in-house or external) in any industry that needs to develop and formalize service delivery measurement
• Executives of user functions/department who heavily depend on internal or external services to operate their activities
• Anyone with a need to improve the quality of services they receive from internal service sources or outsourced services

Instructor Profile:

Javier F. Kuong is the president and principal consultant of Management Advisory Services and Publications (MASP), an organization in the US that for 30 years has been devoted solely to consulting, training, publications, research and development. Prior to MASP, Mr. Kuong was a managing associate at Arthur Young (now Ernst & Young), CIO at Cabot Corporation Worldwide, and corporate planner and economic evaluation analyst and information systems manager at Atlas Chemical Industries (now Astra-Zeneca).

His experience includes a broad array of activities in industrial operations, corporate planning and economic analysis, IT management and IT auditing and internal control, corporate and IT governance and contingency planning as well as business continuity.

Mr. Kuong authored four books on SLAs and SLA related topics based on his experience in developing SLA programmes for clients and previously for his own IT shop as a CIO. He has written or co-authored over 40 books and manuals on corporate and IT governance and compliance; internal control design and assessment; information technology audit and security; systems auditing; internal controls assessment; testing and security; critical process business continuity; network auditing and controls; and guidelines for outsourcing.

He has lectured worldwide in conferences and seminars for major auditing, banking and professional organizations, including the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA), The Information Systems Audit & Control Association (ISACA), CICA, the Netherlands Institute for Registered Accountants (NIVRA), Bahrain Banking Institute, National Banking Institute of India, Government Accountants Association, IAT and others. He has also led courses for many other international associations and advanced technology training institutes in Australasia, Malaysia, India, North Central and South America, Europe and the Middle East.

Mr. Kuong is the recipient of the John Beveridge Achievement Award of the New England Chapter of the Information Systems and Control Association (ISACA).

Topic Background:

Identifying a critical business process that needs service quality improvement:

This approach thinks broadly across interdepartmental lines and views all the "supporting services that make it a high quality process, such as, IT, help desk, maintenance, financial services, procurement, customer support, etc. It does not think in terms of the traditional vertical functional departmental structure, but across all functional units that apply on an enterprise-wide basis to achieve the "business service quality improvement goal."

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