Service Level Agreement (SLA) For CCP Club: Requirements And Implementation

As the post-war baby boomers approach retirement, and with the increased importance given to leisure, there has been an increase in the demand for good quality travel accommodation. Traditional caravan parks have been replaced with high quality privately-owned caravan parks. Independent caravan parks are at a distinct disadvantage for a number of reasons and as a consequence they often join together to form caravan park ‘clubs’. These clubs (which you might describe loyalty clubs) offer travellers added benefits but also help the organisation to ‘lock in’ club members to the particular club.

There are a number of main caravan park clubs in operation across Australia; Family Parks http://www.familyparks.com.au, Big4 http://www.big4.com.au,Top Parks https://topparks.com.au, Kuri Parks https://kuiparks.com.au. This is no different from other competitive environments such as hotel liquor shops or chemist shops which are independent but join together (eg Thirsty Camel, Duncans, Chemist Warehouse, AMCAL). Each of these chains often have loyalty cards.

Imagine there is another caravan park club called Coast to Country Parks (CCP Club). Like the other clubs its aim is to enable the parks to provide common services and build loyalty amongst members of the public who joined the club. They have a large number of independent caravan parks that provide accommodation to the public club members in all states of Australia.

There is currently an ad hoc approach to service management by IT support staff at the Head Office located in Melbourne and both small and large caravan parks.

IT Service Management has been adequate over the years. However, in recent times there has been increasing concern about the level of service. Imagine that you have been asked to investigate options for a Service Level Agreement (SLA) for the CCP Club. Imagine that they have no idea what is meant by an SLA, what it should include and the criteria they might use to select one over another. You are to write a brief report outlining details of your research and the criteria they could use to determine the most appropriate provider.

Discussion: Service catalogue

This report aims to provide the Service Level Agreement for the CCP club and discuss the aspects of the SLA for the organisation. A service catalogue is provided in this report along with the SLA requirements. The implementation issues of the SLA is detailed in the report. At last, the report settles with a suitable conclusion for this report.

Service name: The service name must state terms using which the service is denoted to by club as well as it includes all the terms mentioned to by the IT community. Frequently, the service names might differ among the IT community and the business (Laplante 2017). The documenting of the service name eradicates all the misunderstanding that might happen around names or name of any service. The CCP club must clearly define the services that the club aims to provide for eliminating any confusion among the IT community and the business community.

Service description: The description of the service must be written using simple means that could be understood by all the persons connected to the club. The description must be concise and accurate defining only the service name.

Availability:  The information of the critical period the change management with the regards of authorising and then scheduling the Request for Change. The data of availability must contain the details related to availability of service both along the hours as well as the data by declaring the obvious exemptions. The critical periods for service to business must also be stated clearly (Ghavimi and Chen 2015). If it is known, amount of the business users who could utilise this service must also be stated clearly and this helps with the knowledge of the probable effect of availability of this service. Additionally, it could focus all the minds of personnel of support in the department of IT and therefore is could encourage the prompter recovery of service when it is unavailable and it also ensures the occurrence of the changes are executed at the times that are acceptable to business and with the minimal risk and impact to service level agreements and the service (Kuzlu, Pipattanasomporn and Rahman 2014). The CCP club must provide the details of services that are provided to the members of the club and the extent to which the services could be used by the members must also be provided in detail.

Target availability: This must be reported upon along with the details of where Target availability is whether not being achieved and the issue could be mitigated by the instigation of the Service Improvement Programs. A significant consideration must be provided to the inclusion of the target accessibility that the IT department is aiming to accomplish. (Taleb et al. 2015).

SLA requirements

Backup: The frequency along with the type of the backup must be stated clearly for allowing the senior members to understand the requirements clearly. The CCP club must define the backup of the services if any of the services is effected in any manner.

Service owner: This is the person in the organisation who have been tasked of providing the required funding for all the services. (Perera et al. 2014). The CCP club senior management comprises of this individual who has been tasked to offer the required funding to maintain the proper working of the services. Additionally, Service owner offers the better understanding along with the respected to the level of the service that is currently being delivered and the services that are required in future.

Service representative: Individual who is the service representative offers the focal point for the communication among the business community and the IT department. This communication must be both ways and it permits the IT and the business to cooperate effectively in cooperation (Mahadevan et al. 2014). Finally, it can be understood that service representative offers the invaluable connection among the business community and the IT department.

Service criticality: The business determines the criticality of service. There are some categories of service as well as the equivalent criticality of the services of organisation that includes the Mission critical, business operational, business critical and the administrative services. It is important to understand the sequence by which the services must be recovered during the situation of any kind of disaster.

Service requirements: Service representatives offers the focal centre point for the communication among business community and IT department. This communication must be twofold pathways and it permits the IT and business cooperate in efficient partnership. This involves the provisioning of the constant updates to Service representative when any major outages occurs and the involvement in the decision making from the Business representative (Blendin et al. 2014). The representative of the Service of CCP club would be accountable for the dissemination of the status of the service to all the associates of the service community.

The SLA provides the definition of  level at which the service is anticipated from the dealer, by placing the required metrics using which the services is being calculated and the strategies for mitigation or the consequences must the agreed-on levels of service has not been attained. This is mostly critical for the contract among the club member and the authority. The clear metrics are stated, along with the responsibilities and the expectations are stated in event of any concerns from the service, none of the parties could plead any ignorance. For defining the SLA contract among both of the actors, any efficient SLA must contain these following information:

• The responsibilities of SP and the customer. For the instance it could define the person who would be responsible of monitoring the software and the hardware of the CPE or the Customer Premise Equipment.
• The procedures of SP has to be invoked for violation of the SLS guarantees.
• The discounting policies and the service pricing that has to be applied for the situations when the commitments of the SLA are not fulfilled.
• QoS commitments and the service description. This particular part is commonly referred as the SLS part. It might address the vast range of the services that includes the voice and multimedia, IP VPN and the mobility.
• Efficient reporting to customer. The reporting about the quality of the services that are delivered.
• Any other feature must be defined effectively like the ability to be provided to any customer for changing some parameters settings of the SLA.
• The services that are provided by the CCP club could be availed by the members with the strict compliance with the service level agreement.

Implementation issues

The CCP club might face the implementation issues if any of the services are not completely fulfilled in the SLA. The main challenge while implementing the SLA is the providing of the tools/means for the reliable provisioning of the service in the line with SLA that is established with service customer and the for the reliable monitoring of the SLA fulfilment while the usage of the service for reacting swiftly in the situation of any kind of unsatisfactory performances and probably anticipate the decrease of the performance (Ardagna et al. 2014). There could the issues with the employees and the customers of the organisation and the effective synchronisation might not be achieved by the organisation that could lead to the failure of the SLA. The SLA might not be providing the exact service that was discussed earlier and it could lead to protest against the implementation of the Service Level Agreement.

Conclusion

Therefore, the CCP club could implement the SLA for maintaining the services efficiently in the organisation and maintain effective loyalty of the members of the club. The service catalogue comprises of Service description, Service name, Service owner, Service representative, Target availability, Backup, Availability, Service criticality, and the Service requirements. The main challenge while implementing the SLA is the providing of the tools/means for the reliable provisioning of the service in the line with SLA that is established with service customer and for the reliable monitoring of the SLA fulfilment, the SLA requirement includes the procedures of SP has to be invoked for violation of the SLS guarantees, the discounting policies and the service pricing that has to be applied for the situations when the commitments of the SLA are not fulfilled,  and the efficient reporting to customer, and the reporting about the quality of the services that are delivered.

References

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