EXIN ITILSC-SOA Value Pack (Frequently Bought Together)

Scenario
An IT security company provides secure data services to many large financial organizations in several countries. The company has an administrative headquarters in its home country and a data centre in each country of operation.
Each data centre obtains support for services from third-party contracts provided by a number of suppliers. All supporting services are scoped and documented, and are aligned to the corporate strategy and the regulations in force in each country. The security services company maintains and regularly reviews a preferred supplier list from which suppliers are selected as required.
A service desk function is provided by one of the suppliers. Over the last 10 years, a strong relationship has been built up with the supplier based on the high-quality, consistent service they have provided. The nature of the financial business requires the service desk contract to contain severe penalty clauses that can be enforced if the agreed service levels are not maintained, although these have never been required.
A number of complaints have been received from a new banking customer highlighting that, over the previous three months, the level of service provided by the service desk in the management and handling of incidents has been inconsistent, and many incidents have not been resolved in line with agreed targets.
The IT security company has a service level manager who has performed the role for many years. Recently, a new supplier management process was implemented and a supplier manager appointed. Some confusion has arisen over how, and by whom, the recent complaints should be dealt with.
Refer to the Scenario.
You have been asked to resolve the confusion over the service level manager and supplier manager roles. Which one of the following options BEST represents the correct division of responsibilities and will also address the current complaints regarding the service desk supplier?

• A. Service level manager: Inform the customer that the complaints will be reviewed as a matter of urgency. Assure the customer that a disputes process is in place to ensure that the complaints are dealt with in an efficient and effective manner. Inform the customer that they will be updated on the outcome. Review performance of the supplier for all the services they deliver to the company's customers.
  Supplier manager: Log the complaints. Quickly arrange a meeting with service desk supplier to investigate the complaints. If necessary, initiate the dispute process.
• B. Service level manager: Log the complaints. Inform the customer that the complaints will be reviewed as a matter of urgency. Collect evidence of failures and pass to the supplier manager. Ensure that the complaints are dealt with efficiently and effectively and improvements are initiated where appropriate. Keep the customer informed of both progress and outcome.
  Supplier manager: Arrange a meeting with service desk supplier to investigate the complaints. Review performance of the supplier for all the services they deliver to the company's customers. Report findings back to service level manager.
• C. Service level manager: Log the complaints. Inform the customer that the complaints will be discussed with the supplier at the next scheduled review meeting. Assure the customer that the contractual disputes process will be invoked to ensure that the complaints are dealt with in an efficient and effective manner. Inform the customer of the actions taken.
  Supplier manager: Discuss the complaints with the supplier at the next review meeting Initiate the dispute process with the supplier. Carry out a risk analysis of the supplier and their contract.
• D. Service level manager: Apologize to the customer and compensate them financially for the poor service levels. Assure them that, under the terms and conditions of the contract, a review with the service desk will be carried out and that the supplier will be strictly monitored against agreed targets and penalties imposed, potentially leading to contract termination.
  Carry out a risk analysis of the supplier and their contract.
  Supplier manager: Log the complaints. Set up a review of the supplier and the service desk function. Invoke the contract's penalty clause to recover compensation from the supplier. Increase the supplier's risk rating. Initiate a service improvement plan in conjunction with continual service improvement.

Scenario
A company provides an internet-based gift delivery service which is highly dependent upon IT services provided by the internal IT organization. A year ago the customer payments service that supports the gift ordering website regularly experienced poor availability. The organization hired a service management consultant to assess why the IT services were performing poorly and to rectify the situation.
As part of the solution, the consultant implemented service level management and adopted the role of interim service level manager. Service level agreements were negotiated with the business and agreed. The necessary underpinning agreements were negotiated and put in place. Regular monitoring and reporting was implemented. Monthly service review meetings with the business unit managers were established to discuss IT service performance and any issues and improvements. Within a year of the start of the initiative the gift ordering website IT service was performing at 98.7% availability, a significant improvement.
This month's service review meeting was attended by the chief executive officer (CEO) after concerns were expressed about the most recent availability figure for the customer payments service, which was 94%. This covered the period which included one of the traditionally most popular gift ordering times. The consultant stated that the poor availability was almost entirely due to an incident that occurred during one of the busiest periods and. as a result, the overall monthly availability percentage was low. Initial investigation has shown that the service desk used the SLA to designate the incident as a 'Priority 2'. This was however lower than the 'Priority 1" the business believed the incident should have been. The subsequent delay in restoration of the service meant some customer orders were lost.
The CEO reminded the consultant that a repeat of such an incident would not only have a major effect on monthly revenues but also seriously affect the company's reputation. The consultant agreed that this was unacceptable and committed to review this issue and report back to the CEO.
Refer to Scenario

• A. The issue is with the service desk and its incorrect interpretation of the SLA and failure to escalate the issues. The SLM should agree to set up a SIP for the service desk. The operational level agreement (OLA) with the service desk should be reviewed to ensure that it underpins the SLAs. The SIP should include the retraining of the service desk staff. A complete review of the service desk tools should ensure that they can be used to prioritize incidents correctly by passing through targets agreed into the priority matrix of the toolset.
• B. The SLM should conduct an investigation by reviewing incidents and problems. Ask the IT service desk and support staff what ideas they have to resolve the issue. Review the impact on all other SLAs. OLAs contracts and procedures. Review the maturity associated with the service level management process and take steps to improve this process if necessary. Create a SIP with an associated business case for presentation to the chief executive officer (CEO).
• C. The issue is clearly a breakdown in understanding regarding the critical business periods and the matching of these to the availability targets in the SLAs. The SLM should agree with the business managers to set up a SIP to investigate the issue. The SLAs should be reviewed with the business to ensure that they match with the business needs and, if necessary are updated. Review and update any underpinning agreements as necessary to ensure that they support the targets in the SLAs.
• D. The SLM should agree with the business managers to set up a service improvement plan (SIP) to address the issue. Differing views relating to the cause of the low availability mean it should be investigated thoroughly to establish whether the slow restoration of service was due to a lack of understanding by the service desk, incorrect service level targets in the SLA or simply that, owing to the type of failure, restoration was always going to take that length of time. Appropriate action can then be taken to rectify the issue.