Introduction Of Service Level Agreements (SLAs) For Under Milkwood Pty Ltd, An Essay.

The Role of Investment Review Board (IRB)

The Investment Review Board (IRB) will evaluate the proposal ideas being the highest level of IT investment review board. Under Milkwood Pty Ltd cannot afford loss due to bad decisions of incorporating new ideas and thus it will be best for the company to consider the opinions of the IRB. The main aim of drafting this proposal is to take the opinion of the IRB and come to a conclusion on whether the option is feasible or will it yield maximum profits. IRB refers to a forum for deliberation about Department information technology investments that are required for achieving the mission of this specific department.

The role of the IRB is to maximize the value and thereafter carry out assessment and management of the risk and costs of every investment done toward the information system. This will also integrate decisions related to information system investment with the mission, strategic plan, enterprise architecture, and lastly budget of the Department. Making information resource investment decisions that are based on business requirements and processes is also the responsibility of the IRB.

• The Deputy Secretary
• The Chief Information Officer
• The Chief Financial Officer
• The Director of Budget
• The Assistant Secretary for Management
• The Chief Operating Officer
• Principal Officers

The information that is needed for the purpose of decision making is compact documentation about the idea, the present network condition of the company, infrastructural status, present and potential market shares of the firm, creation of value in the exit phase, and different technologies and more.

Under Milkwood Pty Ltd wants to go for some new idea in the IT Operations Department and this has been thought of as lately the firm is facing some issues. The workload is increasing day by day and there is no such organized resource planning. Customers of the firm are coming with unrealistic expectations that are adding to the workload.  This is affecting the services being provided and thus it is needed that proper actions are taken in this context.

The objective of this proposal is to suggest Under Milkwood Pty Ltd's introduction of Service Level Agreements (SLAs). Having SLAs in place will help the company to address the pressing issue of mismanagement of human resources in a much better way. Here the ones to be included in the SLA will be the internal customers that are employees and external customers such as suppliers excluding the buyers.

The report will suggest to the company the introduction of SLAs but will not include any such documents or addendums about the way this should be implemented. The report will be directed toward the members of the IRB only. The final decision of accepting the proposal is left up to the members of IRB. The report will just highlight the importance of SLA in the situation being faced by Under Milkwood Pty Ltd and explain how it can solve the current issues.

The idea here is to come up with SLAs and address the current issue being faced as mentioned in the above sections. SLA needs to be introduced to ensure that all operational services and related performance are measured and executed in both a consistent as well as a professional way (Al-Ghuwairi et al. 2018). The proposal will make it clear why SLA is the best option in the case of Under Milkwood Pty Ltd. The SLA will provide a proper description of the service level indicators and all of the needed service levels that apply to the Online correction services. With SLAs in place, the problem of unrealistic expectations from the client will be addressed in a better way.

Importance of SLAs

Once the SLA is established both parties in this agreement will be benefitted. It is an ideal situation that SLAs need to be aligned to the various business objectives and any such misalignment can mean a negative impact on deal pricing, quality of the service being delivered, and customer experience. With the establishment of SLA, managers at Under Milkwood Pty Ltd will be able to bring optimization to their cost structure and be better able to manage their capacity. They can as well track the performance of the services being rendered within the process through the means of this SLA. The level of uncertainty that the customers otherwise have with the process will also be addressed well and thus in all ways the business be benefitted from the introduction of SLA (Ampririt et al. 2022). SLA is also a measure to confirm that no party exceeds its limit as there as well as a penalty to be imposed in that case. Under Milkwood Pty Ltd will be able to bring in improvisation in the context of employee service management, better the experiences that the employees have in the firm, enhance the productivity of the HR department, improve team performance, and much more. The way the business used to operate will be modified to bring in some positive changes and address the issues being faced in the present times. With SLA, Under Milkwood Pty Ltd will have defined guidelines and thus be saved from the unrealistic expectations of the client. These expectations are something that pressurize the business and often affect the way it performs. Thus, the introduction of SLA will in all terms be better for the firm. Again, the company will also be enabled to handle the new additions to the IT Operations in a much better way. There will be fewer chances of disgracing from the scope that was decided in the initial requirement.

With SLA in place, the company can go for defined contracts when integrating new technologies into the existing operations. Clients will assess the company in terms of its SLA and thus there will be pressure on the firm to come up with proper rules and regulations in the SLA contract. Suppose an SLA will be signed between the IT support team and the management at Under Milkwood Pty Ltd, there will be an assurance that a commitment is agreed upon by the IT team to check on the safety of the business, quick resolution of support tickets and timely updates. Monitoring and thereafter analysis of ticket resolution can be kept a check. At the same time, various ways can be sought to bring in the improvisation of SLAs across the board for the benefit of all. This will also mean fast resolution of the prioritized tickets and avoidance of long queues (Basu et al. 2018). When Under Milkwood Pty Ltd will go in for a contract with any company to implement a technology, it can ensure that the company does not be exploited. The terms and conditions will be made clear and this will mean no party disgracing from the contract. Especially when implementing some IT-related technologies, the firm can expect proper outcomes to be obtained rather than various conflicts in the project life cycle. Apart from this the client, as well as the company, will be particular about the time commitment and the participants to be involved in the project of technology implementation. But then there are certain disadvantages as well such as if suppose anything the company wants to include later into the scope of the project, the SLA contract has to be revised (Hewa et al. 2020). Revision of the SLA means including all those who were involved and investing much time explaining why there is an addition needed to the already decided scope and more.

Benefits of implementing SLAs for Under Milkwood Pty Ltd

SLA can be signed between the firm and the employees from different departments performing the varied operation. In the case of different operations of the firm, the SLA will act as a blueprint of the service that needs to be rendered by the employees to the firm. Every operation at Under Milkwood Pty Ltd has to be monitored and tracked so that proper results can be obtained. Having an effective SLA will mean that the operations at the firm be optimized and mainly some of the crucial departments such as the IT department function properly. The results that need to be obtained from each of the operations being performed will be mentioned clearly (Iordache and Pop 2019). This means the obtained result and the desired result can be compared to figure out if the work is going in the proper direction. Again, suppose an employee of the firm is not performing his duty which is leading to discrepancies in the results be found out an appropriate decision taken. This will all be done depending on the clauses of the SLA being signed between the employee and the firm. Breach of the agreement will lead to serious consequences. Thus, it can be said that with an SLA agreement be done the operations at Under Milkwood Pty Ltd be enhanced and issues coming into the operations be addressed well. This can also have a negative impact on the employees in a way that they may feel not getting enough space to showcase their talent. SLA means going by certain rules and regulations constricting the creative thinking of an employee in terms of operations (Naveed et al. 2019). The firm can be benefitted to a great extent because a single SLA will cover more than one IT service operation.

SLAs will prove to be beneficial for all of the business processes at Under Milkwood Pty Ltd. SLA developed will be associated with one or more than one specific service and the way all of these services be provided has to be defined by describing the underpinning business process. With SLAs, the companies will be able to understand the normal performance of the processes in a better way. The data collected and used in these processes will be kept a track of as per the rules and regulations of the SLA thus helping to find out how the processes are performing. Having proper SLAs in place will mean monitoring IT from the perspective of the network or the data center (Piparo, Hodosi, and Rusu 2021). User interactions will be defined in a better way with SLAs in place. Under Milkwood Pty Ltd will be provided with some indirect benefits after SLA is introduced for the business processes. They will be helped in prioritizing the works of the IT group and will also ensure better overall system performance. Internal SLA thus developed will mean good relations been established between IT and other various departments at Under Milkwood Pty Ltd. The SLA will help set the expectation from the employees and in this way make the authorities realize what should be the ideal results for the processes and how much has diverged from the ideal result (Ranjbari and Torkestani 2018). This will be of much help to analyze the processes and how these processes are implemented.

Alignment of SLAs with business objectives

SLAs can be of much help to develop trust and bring improvement in relationships between the employees and the authorities. An SLA will provide a description in detail of what service is being rendered and how the service being provided should be measured. Conflicts among people on different issues can also be solved using a properly defined SLA. With proper SLAs in place, the managers will be allowed to gauge the effectiveness of their teams in meeting the expectations of the consumers. The workforce is Under Milkwood Pvt Ltd will be aware of the objectives that they have to meet and can work as per them. Communication is much important when handling various operations in a company and often it has been found that due to a lack of effective communication, projects fail to achieve desired targets (Seo 2018). With well-designed SLA in place, the company will be able to formalize communications with internal and external customers. The establishment of SLAs will also provide a sense of direction to the project teams deployed to work on varied projects. Thus, in all ways, the development of SLA will provide many benefits to the company.

There are different advantages of introducing internal SLA at Under Milkwood Pty Ltd such as promotion of guarantees, ensuring enhanced transparency, a greater level of credibility, all operations being favored, and enhanced management of all business processes.

1. Promotion of guarantees- Having an SLA in place will mean security being provided for both the employee as well as the authority. Both will have legal protection supported by a contract so that non-compliance in any form be prevented. Such as if the company wants to say that the demand put forward by the department is unrealistic, it can refer to the SLA document(Suja and Booba 2020). There will be no way to deny the fact as it will be drafted in the SLA. In this way, the guarantee will be promoted in the business environment of Under Milkwood Pty Ltd.
2. Enhancing transparency- All of the liabilities will be written and signed in contracts thus ensuring that the required level of transparency is maintained in all types of relationships existing within the firm(Suryateja 2018). This again can be directly associated with goals projection and various quality indicators present in the original agreement.
3. A greater level of credibility- With SLA in place, quality will no longer be perceived at times of and after the service is provided rather this will be previously agreed upon (Suja and Booba 2020). The parties will be well aware of the results or rather be clear with the expectations that they have from the firm.
4. All operation favored- With the establishment of an SLA, unnecessary worries will be avoided, and thus the results are much better as compared to what it is now. Communication at the firm will be enhanced and all of the various operations be done in a better way(Vela et al. 2018).
5. Enhanced management of business processes- All of the business processes will be managed well as per the rules and regulations decided in the contract of SLA. There will be no scope to disgrace from the decided objectives and goals thus ensuring that proper results are obtained (Seo 2018). Often addition to the scope results in failed projects but with SLA in place, the parties involved will not have the freedom to do anything they wish. This means optimized business processes and better results.

There are certain negative consequences as well and these have to be taken care of by the company. Without addressing the negative consequences, it cannot be expected that the alternative of the introduction of SLA is successful. Some of the consequences are as given below:

1. Distrust- This is a great concern of its effects on the entire SLA development. If there is doubt in the minds of the parties signing the SLA then the agreement can come to an abrupt end. When an SLA gets discontinued then there is a gap developed among the parties involved thus affecting relationships(Ranjbari and Torkestani 2018). This is a more important factor in internal SLAs because these deal with relationships within the organization and will certainly affect the processes of the business.
2. Breach of SLA- SLA breach can result in delayed delivery of products or services and this can result in business disruption, bring a decrease in employee productivity, and result in loss of consumers and revenue as well.
3. No scope for creativity- With stringent contract conditions employees will not have scope to think out of the box. They will lack the confidence to bring in some new concepts into the operations they are vested responsibility with(Naveed et al. 2019). With the business environment becoming more and more dynamic there is a need to encourage the employees to work in a free manner but with stringent SLAs, in place, there are chances that the employees work in a monotonous manner.

In this context of the introduction of SLA, the method of cost estimation which will be used is the analogous estimating method. That is to make the estimations for this project, values including scope, budget, duration, and lastly, the cost will be figured out from some similar projects (Tayefeh Hashemi, Ebadati and Kaur 2020). This will then be made as the basis for estimating the various costs related to the project of introducing SLA at Under Milkwood Pty Ltd. Relying on the actual costs of similar projects, it can be expected that the estimations done will be near perfect. Introducing SLA will not require much investment to be done.

The recommendations in case of this project are as given below:

1. SLA development needs to be properly discussed with both parties.
2. SLA breach has to be handled properly by discussing the various aspects of the contract.
3. Transparency needs to be maintained when developing the SLA.
4. Have a proper understanding of SLA and what it is meant for.
5. There should be scope to review and adjust the SLA when needed.
6. The indemnification clause should be mandatorily included in the SLA.
7. The company should be specific about using the right type of SLA and be sure to include all of the right elements.

Conclusion

From the above discussion done, it can be said that the introduction of SLA will be beneficial to the company. The company will be benefited from the introduction of internal SLAs. There will be much scope for the company to be specific about the processes and operations of the business. The pressing issue of unrealistic expectations from the client will also be addressed with the introduction of SLA. The proposal has much potential to bring in changes in the way of operation of Under Milkwood Pty Ltd. Expert advice can be taken on the idea to be surer about the consequences of the same. The company needs to be taken note of the negative as well as the positive impacts so that a better understanding is obtained about what type of SLA should be introduced.

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