There are three elements of cost to consider: expenditure, people and time.
The financial outlay for service level management is restricted to any software
packages purchased to automate the reporting process. These can be expensive
and it can take time to set them up, define meaningful reports and train people to
use them. We recommend that you do not purchase software reporting tools at this
stage, as we believe that it is better to spend time developing the FITS processes
and refining reporting requirements first. You can only automate successfully what
you have already defined manually.
In large organisations the role of service manager may be a full-time position or
there may even be more than one service manager. This is because it is a
customer-facing role and is often seen as a key aspect of customer service. The
role is similar to that of an account manager. In a small organisation or a school the
service manager role is likely to be a part- time function allocated to someone
responsible for ICT or technical support. Reporting tasks may also be assigned as
a part-time function. We describe the roles and responsibilities in service level
management in the Implementation guide for this section and you can find
additional information in Roles and responsibilities.
Remember to allow time also for the implementation and for integrating the process
into normal day-to-day activities. We have created a
table of activities to help you
plan the amount of time required.
