The SLA metrics you include will vary based on the services you are outsourcing. You should try to streamline your agreement to minimize costs and prevent misunderstanding for both parties. Examine your business operations, the workload, and your workflow, and identify the most important performance metrics to include. Overly complex monitoring processes and penalties are less effective because of the time needed for analysis by your IT department. Automatic data collection is the easiest approach and helps to ensure the reliability of your metrics.
A few of the types of metrics you might want to monitor include the following:
Security – Data breaches can be costly in terms of downtime, repairs, and potential regulatory penalties. Established security measures can help to prevent potential security breaches and show that you took the necessary steps if an incident occurs.
Service availability – You should include timeframes when the service should be available for end-users. For example, you might include a metric of 99% availability during business hours and a reduced availability during off-hours. If you operate an e-commerce site, your service availability and uptime requirements should be high at all times to ensure the best customer experience and customer satisfaction.
Customer service – If your provider will deliver customer support services, you should include metrics for measuring its performance and effectiveness. For example, including such things as expected response times, service quality, and the effectiveness of interventions are all important.
Error rates – It’s important to measure error rates, including missed deadlines, coding mistakes, restore failures, incomplete backups, and others.
Results – To ensure your business needs are efficiently met, you might include key performance indicators for your business processes as they relate to the contributions made by your IT vendor.
