<p>Copyright TM Forum 2006-2008<br/></p><p><br/></p><p><b>Overview</b><br/></p><p>Successful SLA management is a growing factor in maintaining customer satisfaction and winning new business. These can be applied to both business and consumer customers. Satisfied customers are less likely to churn to competitors. SLA Management applications use the output of the SQM applications to provide a comprehensive view of the level of service provided to customers compared to pre-agreed, often contractually binding, agreements. Typically SLA agreements will be agreed between operator and customer to measure a variety of service oriented issues and impacts. These may be either stated in terms of service characteristics, or in terms of the business impacts on the customer. An example of service oriented characteristics could include:<br/></p><p><ul><li>Availability</li><br/></p><p><li>Security</li><br/></p><p><li>Latency</li><br/></p><p><li>Transmission speed</li><br/></p><p><li>Time to respond to the initial fault report</li><br/></p><p><li>The escalation process</li><br/></p><p><li>The time to repair</li><br/></p><p><li>Spares holding</li><br/></p><p><li>The algorithm for calculating rebates</li><br/></p><p><li>Contact details</li><br/></p><p><li>Time to deliver from order confirmation</li><br/></p><p><li>Additional services</li><br/></p><p><li>Capacity</li><br/></p><p></ul><br/></p><p>Increasingly, business customers are demanding SLA's measured in terms of business impacts. For example, Qantas, the Australian state airline measures its communications service levels in terms of impact of any disruptions on flights. SLA's are also becoming an important characteristic between various players in the communications value chain. Service Level Agreements between network suppliers and service operators (for example a mobile virtual network operator MVNO) are common and are likely to grow between service providers and content suppliers.<br/></p><p><br/></p><p><b>Functionality</b><br/></p><p><ul><li>Collection of Service KPIs and Key Quality Indicators (KQIs) from:</li><br/></p><p><li>Element management systems,</li><br/></p><p><li>Directly from certain resource elements</li><br/></p><p><li>Other OSS and applications</li><br/></p><p><li>Apply appropriate algorithms to calculate the SLA metrics</li><br/></p><p><li>Compare the calculated metric to the agreed SLA / Operational Level Agreements (OLA) metric</li><br/></p><p><li>Raise SLA alarms and pass to alarm management system</li><br/></p><p><li>Collate historical SLA information</li><br/></p><p><li>Analyze that information</li><br/></p><p><li>Publish the information in the form of reports etc.</li><br/></p><p><li>Notification of charge / settlement adjustment information to other architecture functions (including Product Interface Management, Billing & Settlement, Business Intelligence, Legal)</li><br/></p><p><li>Update Data warehouse with SLA statistics.</li><br/></p><p><li><b>Key Data</b></li><br/></p><p><li>SLA created in SLA Management system from SLA contract</li><br/></p><p><li>KPIs & KQIs from the network and other sources</li><br/></p><p><li>Business rules for comparing</li><br/></p><p></ul><br/></p><p><b>Supported Contracts</b><br/></p><p><i>To Be Added</i><br/></p>