Service Level Agreement

SAP SLA IN PRODUCTION SUPPORT:- SLA is an abbreviation for "Service Level Agreement". It means to have guaranteed reaction or resolving times for incidents (= trouble tickets). For instance you could have defined the following SLA levels For example: Gold: Reaction time = 30 minutes, resolving time = 4 hours Silver: Reaction time = 4 hours, resolving time = 24 hours SLAs normally are part of a contract between a customer and a service provider. Or in details description:  SLA are Service Level Agreements to resolve the tickets by the market. SLA means Service Level agreement. It is the service agreement between a Company and a service provider. For example an IT Organization providing support of SAP / other software / hardware has a agreement. This can be for example categorized based on criticality of the incident. High priority incident has to be resolved on 10 hours. Medium priority incident has a 3 days time to resolve etc.   Another good example is when you encounter problems with the SAP ERP modules  e.g. If you are creating an OSS message reporting to SAP that you found a product bug, this would be one ticket.  In regard to time frames this usually differs from SLA to SLA, e.g. if you raise a VERY HIGH OSS message, SAP is supposed to react (start working) on that OSS within one hour. Usually the higher the priority the smaller the reaction time and also maximum processing time to resolve the problem is. You would solve a ticket by analyzing the problem e.g. through debugging the example and once you identified the problem making the appropriate coding changes to correct the issue.   DEFINE SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENT SLA's are nothing but Service level agreements. These are defined in project preparation phase and client would have made an agreement with the company for the level of service. The SLA's are applicable in Production as well as maintenance support projects. For example: if your company follows a ticketing process (a ticket is nothing but an environment contains complete description of the problem which contains Short description, problem, customer contact details, screen shots of the error etc.,) and for each ticket there will be a severity for example business critical issues or problems may be treated as high or top severitie's. In those case your company or your team has to deliver the solution to the customer in agreed time limit or otherwise you might end up missing SLA's. SLA's has two important time specifications 1. IPRT --- initial problem response time --- this is nothing but time taken to respond to the problem. 2. PRT --- Problem response time ----- this is nothing but time taken to solve the issue or problem. Both IPRT and PRT will be different for different severitie's.

 SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENTS (SLA) 

Use

Using Service Level Agreements (SLAs), you work with customers to stipulate the form that the performance of a guaranteed service takes.

The SLAs define the attributes (such as content, scope and means) for the service products (for example, maintenance, Hotline) agreed on with the customer in the service contract. Different parameters, such as response time or availability time, confirm a SLA.

Examples of parameters within a SLA:

·  Response time (technician on site within a specified time)

·  Operating time/availability time (working time of the service or support center)

·  Downtime (maximum number of breakdowns per year)

·  Availability (assured system availability in %)

·  Solution time (maximum period of time allowed for the solution of a problem)

INTEGRATION

Default Values in the Product Master

The set type Default Values for Service Contracts is available in the product master, when you maintain the products of type Service that are intended for service contracts. In this set type, you can specify default values for both of the above-mentioned SLA parameters. If you choose the service product in a service contract item, the data from the SLA parameters is copied to the contract item where it can be overwritten as required.

If you want to use other parameters in addition to the ones delivered by SAP, you can do so using another customer-specific set type. Processing of the data from the set type occurs using Business Add-Ins.

Pricing

An SLA influences both pricing in the contract items and the business transactions in service with reference to a service contract. Therefore, for example, the monthly price of a service can change depending on the response time defined. SLAs also influence date calculation in the service process to which the relevant contract items refer.

ESCALATION MANAGEMENT

If the services agreed on in the SLA cannot be performed within the time specified, a predefined escalation process is started.

SAP delivers a standard procedure for escalation management  that you can use and enhance if required. You can set up escalation management in Customizing. You can find information about this in the Implementation Guide (IMG) under Customer Relationship

An escalation for a missed deadline could occur as follows:

·  The responsible processor is informed per e-mail when the first response time is exceeded and the transaction is still not in process.

·  The responsible department manager is informed per e-mail when the first response time is exceeded by 2 hours and the transaction is still not in process.

·  The responsible service manager is informed per e-mail when the first response time is exceeded by 8 hours and the transaction is still not in process.

A similar escalation could occur if the completion date is exceeded and the transaction is still not in process.

Features

By default, SAP delivers the SLA parameters

·  Service Profile and

·  Response Profile

Activities

To edit the SLA parameters, choose Service ® Service Contracts and Service Plans ®  Maintain Availability and Response Times from the SAP Menu in SAP CRM.

On the Service Data tab page in the service contract item, you can choose the required SLA parameters in the set type Service Agreements.

If a service plan is agreed in the service contract item, you can maintain the service plan data and dates on the Service Data tab page, but not the service agreements.

RESPONSE PROFILE

In the Maintain Availability and Response Times transaction, you can use any combination of the following indicator keys to create as many timeframes with duration and time unit as you want:

·  Category

·  Priority

·  Catalog

·  Code group

·  Code

In this way, you can define, for example, a duration to first response, a duration to completion and timeframes that can be established in between, such as:

·  Time until the arrival of a technician at the customer site

·  Duration of repair

·  Downtime of machines at the customer’s

To maintain the response times, choose a key combination in the transaction by selecting the required line and switching to the view for response times. There you can enter any number of timeframes for the selected key combination.

Choose a duration of time for each period that was created in Customizing for date management in the activity Customer Relationship Management ® Basic Functions ® Date Management ® Define Date Types, Duration Types and Date Rules. Specify the duration and time unit for these.

You can stipulate a response profile for each contract item during the maintenance of service contracts. To do this, select the Service Data tab page at item level.

When you maintain service products in the product master, you can enter default values for the response profile. The default values can be overwritten in the service contract item in which the service product was stipulated.

You receive a malfunction report from a customer on Monday at 10:00 am and a service order with priority 1 is created.

In the response profile for the relevant service contract item, a duration to first response of 2 hours and a duration to completion of 8 hours is defined for service processes with priority 1. The standard service profile is defined in the service profile, which contains the following availability times: Monday to Friday from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm.

The following times/dates result from this: First response time 12:00, completion time 9:00 am on the following day.

This means you must have responded to the malfunction report by 12:00 on Monday, for example, by calling the customer to discuss or clarify the problem. The transaction must be completed by Tuesday at 9:00 am, for example by a technician on-site.

Service Profile

You can stipulate a service profile for each contract item during the maintenance of service contracts. To do this, select the Service Data tab page at item level.

When you maintain service products in the product master, you can enter default values for the service profile. The default values can be overwritten in the service contract item in which the service product was stipulated.

You define a service profile Standard with the following availability times: Monday to Friday from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm CET.

You assign the service profile Weekend to the service product Weekend Hotline, in which you define Saturday 8:00 am CET to Sunday 7:00 pm CET as availability time.