In this chapter, we look at the specific objectives, aspects, requirements and skills associated with the role and in particular, its differentiation from that of the related but distinct role of business relationship manager (BRM).

INTRODUCTION

The role of the SLM is arguably one of the most important roles in IT. This is because it is instrumental in promoting positive relationships between the service provider and the service provider’s customers. It does this by providing a communications bridge between the two parties, aiming to ensure that IT services and the associated service levels remain aligned to the needs of business users and their departments.

Of course, as an IT service provider, your organisation may be providing services to internal customers, external customers or a combination of the two. Traditionally the SLM role is associated with the provision of services to internal customers. However, if customers are external, while the role is still appropriate, it takes on somewhat different characteristics since the relationship is on a commercial footing. In this case, the role of SLM may sit alongside or even be part of the role of account manager, since in a commercial relationship, service and finance are closely linked.

Nonetheless, even when the IT service provider’s customers are internal and no money actually changes hands, there is no good reason why the management of service levels and indeed service provision should not be undertaken on a professional basis, and this is a recurring theme throughout this book.

From this point forward I will, for convenience, refer to the SLM role, but please consider the guidance to be equally applicable to the SDM role, unless otherwise stated.

PURPOSE OF THE ROLE

For the service level management process to be considered under basic control in the process maturity model, that is, at level 3 or ‘defined’ maturity (see Chapter 10), there should be a written policy relating to service level management. In the event that this exists, it will provide a useful blueprint for your role as SLM. Should it not exist, you may find it useful and appropriate to draft one yourself to gain both corporate commitment and legitimacy of the process (and implicitly your role). A draft policy template is offered in Appendix B.

A key purpose of your role as SLM is to understand, capture and respond appropriately to your customer’s service level requirements on behalf of your organisation, which is acting as the IT supplier.

Your role is also instrumental in maintaining communication between IT and its customers in both directions, that is, providing information about IT services and capturing and acting on information about business requirements.

In fact, IT has two primary responsibilities: providing IT services to its customers and helping its customers make the most effective use of the IT services.

The second of these is often overlooked, yet is a key aspect of the SLM role, albeit in concert with the business relationship management role. In other words, it isn’t sufficient just to provide IT services; it is an inherent part of the IT supplier’s obligation to help its customers and users gain maximum advantage from those services. One could argue that this is more applicable to the provision of services to internal customers, but there’s no reason why a managed service provider or outsourcer should not make the same commitment.

In practice, this means:

While you may not personally deal with or be responsible for all of these aspects, you are accountable for ensuring each is realised. So, for instance, to determine the capability of the IT department to meet your customer’s service level requirements you might engage with colleagues working in the capacity and availability management area. For financial assessment, you will need to talk with your finance manager or chief finance officer (CFO).

To satisfy this purpose you will need to meet the objectives associated with your role included in Table 2.1 later in this chapter.

COMPETENCIES, SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGE

The SLM role requires a blend of relationship management and people skills with technical skills that is relatively unusual in IT but perhaps shared with the roles of BRM and continual service improvement manager.² If you lack the relationship management and people skills, you will find it hard to build meaningful relationships with your customers, a key aspect of the role. However, lacking basic technical skills will put you at a disadvantage in building relationships with your IT peers.

Ideally, you will have a portfolio of competencies, skills and knowledge spanning a number of areas, such as:

Interpersonal and relationship skills

Interpersonal and relationship skills are the softer skills and attributes you will need in order to be able to build an effective relationship with your colleagues on both the customer and supplier sides of the business. While these can be honed over time, they tend to be personality traits you already have to one extent or another that make you suitable for this type of role. These skills include diplomacy, influencing and negotiation, building trust, ability to empathise, dependency and reliability, and integrity and confidentiality. Employers therefore often look for people who already have these skills, even if they do not have a service management background, since the technical skills and an understanding of the organisation and its business can be taught.

As an SLM, the success of your role is going to depend to a large extent on these interpersonal and relationship skills.

Diplomacy, influencing and negotiation skills

There will be occasions when your customer’s demands and requirements are either unrealistic or unreasonable. Diplomacy and influencing and negotiating skills will help you to deal with these situations and find solutions or compromises satisfactory to both parties. Sometimes you need a core belief that a solution is possible, even if it isn’t obvious, and it is this confidence that can help you to arrive at a compromise. This is why you need to have a level of influence within the organisation, but particularly within IT, as technical people are often good at saying things like ‘It can’t be done.’ Instead, work on the old adage that ‘Where there’s a will, there’s a way.’ But simply going over someone’s head to gain authority for an action (for instance) is unlikely to be the basis of an effective working relationship with people on whom you are likely to rely in the future!

IT technology skills

There is a question over the level of technical or technology skills required by an SLM and, as is often the case, there is no right or wrong answer. From my own personal perspective, my lack of technical IT skills was never a hindrance in my role. This is because my customers and the business unit managers were themselves not focused on technology.

However, there are those who believe technical skills (of at least a moderate level) are an asset or even a prerequisite for the role. What is certain is that a balance of skills is appropriate and that ideally you can have a mainly non-technical conversation with a business customer yet also have a broadly technical conversation with an IT colleague.

The challenge is that it is rare to find individuals equally comfortable in front of customers and IT people and, on this basis, I do not see a lack of strong technology skills as necessarily an inhibiter to the SLM role. On the other hand, someone with strong technology skills but weak business acumen is unlikely to be suited to the role.

The level of technology skills you require will in fact be driven by the technology skills of your customers. They will expect you to have at least as much knowledge as they do, and some of them will have come from a technology background.

If you don’t feel your technical skills are adequate, there are two alternatives. Either acquire these through training or, alternatively, take along a colleague more conversant with technology when you meet an informed customer. There is no shame in a lack of technology skills, particularly if your business acumen is particularly well developed.

Business acumen

Business acumen can be defined as an understanding of what makes a company successful. It includes the drivers of profitability and/or cash flow and a market-focused understanding of the business and its interrelationships with its customers, suppliers and regulators, and with legislation.

From your perspective as an SLM, refer to your understanding of what makes your organisation successful and how IT generates and supports corporate success. Your ability to understand this, reflect it in the SLAs and facilitate a successful IT and business relationship based on it, is arguably a critical success factor (CSF) for the role and should therefore be a primary focus.

The level of business acumen you require is considerably more than you are likely to gain from an induction course, although this can be a useful starting point. There are then likely to be some generic factors you need to know that relate to all businesses but, more importantly, there are aspects you need to know that are specific to your business and the sector in which it operates.

This in turn touches on the key ITIL concepts of ‘Value on Investment’ and ‘Return on Investment’ that represent ways of justifying a course of action or proposed investment of money, time or effort.

In practice, business acumen is not easily acquired, but may come either from insight gained from long service with the organisation or some form of relevant study, such as an economics degree or MBA.

Generic skills

As SLM, you will benefit from the following generic skills together with an understanding of the specific activities of the organisation:

THE SERVICE LEVEL MANAGER AND THE SERVICE LEVEL MANAGEMENT PROCESS OWNER

As we saw in the previous chapter, if you work in a larger and more mature organisation, you may have two roles associated with the service level management process: the SLM and the service level management process owner. In such an organisation, there will implicitly be more than one SLM since otherwise the norm is for a single person to adopt both roles.

The key responsibilities of the process owner include:

The responsibilities of the SLM will be covered in the next chapter.

As the SLM, you will develop a close working relationship with the process owner. This is of course a two-way relationship, as your approach is likely to be significantly influenced by theirs, and they will look to you and your fellow SLMs to support them in their objectives and help them to identify improvement potential.

If no process owner has been appointed, then you are likely to be expected, either implicitly or explicitly, to wear both ‘hats’ and fulfil some or all of the responsibilities of both roles. However, the SLM role will consume significantly more of your time than that of process owner, which tends to require no more than a few hours or less a month.

WHERE SHOULD THE SERVICE LEVEL MANAGER ROLE SIT WITHIN IT?

It is a fact of life that in some organisations, your authority as the SLM role holder is based on your position in the management hierarchy, and this is why it is important that your role is positioned such that it can drive the required actions within both the IT and the business departments.

This most likely precludes your role being at the level of junior management since, if you can’t act as the voice of IT and drive the necessary actions to agree and deliver against your customer’s service level requirements, your business colleagues will simply go over your head. While as the SLM you may not have the authority to negotiate service levels yourself, in taking your customer’s service level requirements back into IT for evaluation you are acting as your customer’s representative.

It may be, for instance, that your customer’s new or changed requirements demand additional capacity, financial investment, extra resources or some other change. Your role is to act as the voice of your customer in requesting and promoting the change. In practice, this means you are providing an interface between your customer and their business activities and your colleagues within IT to help them understand the business drivers and benefits. In reverse, you also need to recognise the IT consequences of the change and may need to negotiate the associated costs and time frame with your customer. Both of these perspectives require an appropriate level of authority.

There are two risks associated with placing the role in the IT hierarchy. First, place it too low and the role has insufficient authority to drive the required actions. Second, in a highly technically focused IT organisation, the role of the SLM, which is essentially a people/service-focused role, can lack the respect and support of the other IT teams if it isn’t placed at a sufficiently senior level within the management hierarchy.

The second risk is increasingly less likely as IT departments recognise the need to support the business and business processes, but it can still occur. Therefore, in smaller organisations, the SLM role may well report to the head of IT. In larger organisations, it is perhaps more appropriate to have the role one level lower in the hierarchy, reporting perhaps to the service manager or equivalent role.

SEPARATION FROM THE BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP MANAGER ROLE

The ITIL framework now recognises another relationship management role, that of BRM. The distinction between these roles can be blurred in some organisations and the same person may fulfil both in smaller organisations, so it’s worth summarising the similarities and differences between the two roles (Table 2.1).

Table 2.1 Comparison of the business relationship management and service level management roles

² See the BCS books in the same series, Business Relationship Manager by Ernest Brewster and Continual Service Improvement Manager by David Whapples, for more information.