How are you managing SLA for Multiple assignment groups across Multiple Service Providers?

[Suggy]

In some cases to resolve an incident, there could be multiple assignment groups involved from multiple service providers. In such cases, how are you handling:

1. Assignment of Incident (do you reassign or make use of Incident task or what you do?

2. How do you define and track sla? (SLA at specific service provider level or at incident level etc?)

Please share complete details around this if you have implemented Incident management in a multi service provider scenario.

Thank you !

[briandunbar]

I see two main patterns customers follow.

1. One "ticket" that gets passed around you can use potentially fewer SLA definitions by leveraging "by assignment" SLA breakdowns to determine how much time was spent where and who it breached on... If you have not looked at SLA Breakdowns these are a key tool to minimizing the number of SLA definitions you need to write to get the insights you need for multi-provider setups.

2. Incident tasking this is the cleanest approach and helps in dealing with queue thrashing (tickets being punted between queues without action) to avoid SLA penalties. As mentioned this requires SLA definitions are two levels but you can still use SLA breakdowns to not have to create definitions at provider and priority level.

I'm a fan of #2 however it does come with overhead as well, syncing INC task comments/worknotes with INC for a clean user experience.  Adding this layer of abstraction to help track your multi-provider performance comes with that cost and others you'll find...but in one persons opinion the best approach.

[Suggy]

Hi @briandunbar ,for #2 , how will you define the SLA at INC task level.

Ex - Lets say total resolution SLA is 1 hour for the INC. The SLA for task should be lesser than that right. How will you define what should be the SLA duration for TASK?

You might create an INC Task at 1st min itself or you can create the task at 59th min. 

So this is the main challenge I see with this approach -  how much time to define to INC task.

Another scenario is where - say you might need to create INC Task for 2 or 3 Service providers. So how to handle that scenario.

Please share your thoughts around this if you come across such scenario.

Thank you

[briandunbar]

Well good SLA design you would have OLAs for your service providers, if the INC is 1hr and you assign the service provider at 59th min, they don't have a penalty for that. Your INC tasks should be aligned with your partner OLAs so they are only "on the clock" for the time they have. The INC would house the overarching SLA which is your agreement with the end user...if you sub contract it out parts of that you need to account for that in your SLA design.