What exactly does a best practice Shared Service Centre mean and what is required to achieve it? it consists of those top 5% of Shared Service Centres which peform best against a criteria of both quality service delivery and efficient service delivery. The definition is a powerful one – and its not mine. So what exactly is these Best Practice Centres do that no one else is? Or what is it they do better? These were the questions asked by the European MD of the Hackett Group at today’s Planning and Implementing Shared Service Centre in London – thankfully he answered the questions…
Sep 25
If you have started reading then you may be one of thousands of professionals who are reporting on SLA compliance using spreadsheets. I feel your pain and your effort. Spreadsheets are a great invention – in many cases they make our lifes easier and our jobs faster. The problem is that SLA reporting is not one of the things which spreadsheets make easier. For many people though the alternative has been expensive and clunky IT tools to manage SLAs. Interested in a tool that you could deploy in 40 minutes? That does not require any IT consultants or software? That will cost you less than $2000 per year?
Sep 24
Interesting chat today with somebody about SLAs in Shared Services Organisations. Most Shared Services Organisations are actually keen to use service level agreements and to demonstrate the level of service they provide against the agreed Service KPIs. However, I sense that some Shared Services professionals feel that the number of KPIs in many Shared Services SLAs has become too large.
Sep 23
One of the discussions I have with clients is how to identify the right SLA metrics. My advice is that the best SLA metrics look at end-to-end services, and measure how they are delivered. The idea is to consider the service as a ‘black box’ – look at the business outcomes and then how the business outcomes should be measured. So instead of measuring components of the service – servers, applications, internal processes, we measure the service which the customer receives.
Sep 22
The experience of launching our new SLA Template site has been a very exciting one. To date we have created a number of generic SLA templates - the key ones are;
Sep 21
I had a discussion with a sourcing advisor in the US today about daily KPIs. The key question is should I be getting Service Providers to report on KPIs in SLAs on a daily basis. Consultant answer: depends on the context. ServiceFrame answer: We can but I wouldn’t.
Sep 21
SLA compliance and SLA measurement is a standard topic of conversation in most shared services organisations. We all know that SLAs are important, that SLA metrics are important, and that SLA management is important – we also all know that some how the process of reporting on SLAs in shared services environment is fraught with difficulty. These are not armed length transactions. The consequence of non-compliance to SLAs is never clear. Some organisations choose to call them Operating Level Agreements. I understand why but I dont think this really addresses the underlying issue abouto managing SLAs in Shared Services Centres.
Sep 19
Organisations often refer to SLA Frameworks or Service Level Agreement Frameworks – typically this somewhat nebulous phrase will refer both to the scope of services which are to be covered by SLAs aswell as the governance process which will be put in place to ensure that Service Levels are adhered.
Sep 19
One of the questions I received recently was about reverse KPIs. What are they and why are they used? All relationships require activity and commitment on both sides – this is particularly true in outsourcing and shared services. It is sometimes assumed that Service Level Agreements outline all the services that they must be undertaken by service providers and that they are then used by clients to express dissatisfaction and enforce penality clauses. In reality many Service Level Agrements now accurately reflect the activities that must be undertaken on both sides to ensure that the SLA is succesful. Lets take an example.
Sep 18
We gets lot of calls and e-mails every week for SLA templates or Service Level Agreement templates - all shapes and sizes. And the winner this week is definitely HR SLA templates. We have had countless requests for HR SLA templates and some very specific questions around the extent to which reverse KPIs are common in HR SLAs and supported in them.
