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 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.
• 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 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.

Scenario
A financial services organization has undergone a period of rapid expansion. From its operating base it has expanded to serve customers in over 25 countries spread around the globe. There are plans to enter more markets in the next 12 months.
The key stakeholders involved in the global expansion project have briefed the chief information officer (CIO) on the plans. They have identified IT service performance as one of the major threats to the plan. The CIO has been under pressure from the board due to poor IT service performance in the previous six months. The chief concern has been significant performance variations in network connectivity and communications.
The organization currently has three contracts with different local external suppliers in operating markets supporting three IT network hubs. Whilst the suppliers are all happy to follow local internal IT processes, getting the three to work together on incidents or changes has proved increasingly difficult.
A number of outages have resulted in a blame culture where even the local internal IT departments have been sympathetic to their service providers, resulting in strained relationships between these internal departments at an operational level.
Other issues encountered at one or more locations have included:
* Long-term service improvements have been sacrificed in favour of short-term fixes that avoid the payment of contract penalties by the suppliers
* Changes in ownership of the customer relationship by the suppliers
The CIO believes that a lack of communication between suppliers has been the key cause of failures.
All three supplier contracts are due for renewal in the next 12 months. After consultation, a decision to re-tender for network services has been taken by IT, and approved by the CIO and the board of directors.
Refer to the Scenario.
When considering suppliers, which one of the following options would BEST ensure that network issues are addressed in order to meet the needs of the financial services organization?

• A. Consideration should be given to re-contracting with the three current local suppliers. There is no suggestion that they are technically incompetent; it appears to be communication and local cultural differences that cause problems.
  Supplier management should have a single, defined local point of ownership with responsibility granted for operational management of issues.
  The threat of contractual penalties should be removed to encourage suppliers to think longer term about sustainable service improvements.
  Communication issues should be addressed by ensuring all incidents are reported to a single global service desk that the financial institution should implement.
  Suppliers are to ensure that staff engaged in the contract (in particular the account managers and customer service managers) are fully ITIL trained so they understand and can implement service management best practice disciplines.
• B. Consideration should be given to entering into a partnership with a single supplier where mutual trust and a good relationship can be established.
  Supplier management should have a single, defined point of ownership within each country to manage all local operational issues.
  A risk-reward framework should be mapped out as an incentive for the supplier to solve local issues.
  A strategic alignment should be sought with the supplier where values, goals and cultural fit are similar to that of the financial services organization.
  The supplier should set up its own dedicated global account management team to deal with transition and on-going issues by working with local IT support teams.
• C. Consideration should be given to entering into a partnership with three local suppliers who have worked together before in similar circumstances. This will ensure both communication and local cultural differences are addressed.
  Supplier management should have a single, defined local point of ownership with responsibility granted for operational management of issues.
  The threat of contractual penalties should be removed to encourage suppliers to think longer term about sustainable service improvements.
  Suppliers will commit to the use of local IT processes to ensure compliance and good communication.
  Suppliers are to ensure that staff engaged in the contract (in particular the account managers and customer service managers) are fully ITIL trained so they understand and can implement service management best practice disciplines.
• D. Consideration should be given to entering into a partnership with a single supplier where mutual trust and a good relationship can be established.
  Supplier management should have a single, defined point of ownership with local responsibility granted for operational management of issues.
  A long-term, risk-reward framework should be mapped out to encourage the supplier to work towards sustainable service improvements instead of shorter-term quick fixes.
  A strategic alignment should be sought with the supplier where values, goals and cultural fit are similar to that of the financial services organization.
  Implementation of a joint partnership team to initially ensure a smooth transition of the service to the new supplier and to subsequently manage on-going service improvement.