<p>Copyright TM Forum 2006-2008<br/></p><p><br/></p><p><b>Overview</b><br/></p><p>Customer Quality of Service (QoS) and / Service Level Agreement (SLA) Management(Contract and SLA Management) is a set of functions, possibly residing in more than one application, that assist operators in ensuring that their customers get the level of service for which they are paying. This area is specifically implemented to enable the operator to 'see' the service through the eyes of the customer, i.e. customer perceived quality. This is not to be confused with the related set of functions and applications that exist at the service management and resource management layers to help operational managers understand the performance of services and network resources respectively. Customer QOS functions aim to measure the customer perceived quality of service. An example of this is the approach taken to measure voice or video service quality as perceived by a human being. This is known as Mean Opinion Scoring and makes an objective measure of customer perceived quality using technologies that simulate the human ear and human perception. Such measures may be required by legislators or be published in league tables. Certainly operators who believe that good quality services enable them to retain and delight customers take this area of QOS management seriously. QOS measurements may be applied either on a per customer basis; against a group of customers (e.g. a corporate account) or across an entire service. It may be applied where one operator is retailing another operator's wholesale service (e.g. Mobile Virtual Network Operators)If QOS applications measure the actual level of service being offered, SLA management applications (Contract Management) provide the ability to compare actual QOS with the pre-agreed level of service promised and flag any jeopardizes encountered. This is particularly important where service level guarantees (SLG's) have been contractually offered - the primary purpose of the SLA management application(s) is to ensure that the operator knows at any time which services to which customers may potentially or actually be in breach of a service level guarantee.<br/></p><p><br/></p><p><b>Functionality</b><br/></p><p>Specific functions of this application area are:<br/></p><p><ul><li>Document Contractual SLA obligations - the purpose of this function is to document contracts and contract terms (entitlements) signed with the customer and provide automated monitoring of the potential or actual breaches to the terms of the SLA. Escalation hierarchy should be defined for automatic notifications of the potential or actual breaches</li><br/></p><p><li>Measure perceived QoS - the purpose of this function is to measure or estimate the actual quality of service being received by the customer against pre-set thresholds.</li><br/></p><p><li>Manage QoS/SLA Violation - the purpose of this function is to ensure that the customer and the relevant internal processes are informed of service quality degradations and violations and that action is undertaken to resolve the degradation or violation. Analyzes all the information related to a QoS/SLA degradation or violation and takes the appropriate actions when a soft threshold is crossed or the agreed QoS is violated. Follows up the actions to ensure that the customer is satisfied with the resolution of the problem. Ensures that the customer is informed of any planned maintenance or other scheduled events likely to impact delivery of the customer's service.</li><br/></p><p><li>Manage Reporting - the purpose of this function is to report on the customer's QoS performance, to manage the production and presentation of reports to the customer on service levels in the form and at the times agreed with the customer, to prepare reports for internal processes and respond to specific inquiries on the performance of the customer service.</li><br/></p><p></ul><br/></p><p><b>Supported Contracts</b><br/></p><p>E.g., Network Performance Management<br/></p>