How do you bring your SLA to life?

To achieve sustained growth many companies invest in standardising best practices and openly encouraging innovation.  At the centre of these organisations is a vibrant and focused IT group who help recognise, standardise and replicate good systems and processes.

Just like your company, our clients have a quest to continuously improve their organisation and one of their goals is to drive down cost and improve service. For a complex global IT group this manifested itself as clear and concise Service Level Agreement and it was published to the rest of the company.

Such change can often spark off scepticism, leading to misunderstandings of what to expect and when. Service Level Agreements are notoriously difficult to interpret and theirs was no exception. This lead to a lack of understanding which began to have an impact on customer satisfaction.

The IT department, like many in business, is often seen as the bearer of bad news or worse, a draining cost centre. We regularly hear the main contact most people have with their IT team is when things go wrong.  As many IT managers will state “You only meet us if there is a problem!”

This view of a fire-fighting, “technical support” team that’s just a hefty cost centre for the company must change so that other parts of the business understand the priorities of the IT team.  When Service Level Agreements are neither being read nor understood it creates a lot of frustration and discontent all around. 

The goals we set to solve these issues for our client were;

• To bring their Service Level Agreement to life
• To explain their new IT organisation to the rest of the company
• To let the team know they were appreciated and supported
• We came up with a simple way to do this and one that can be easily replicated.

The Solution: A “Promo” Video

We videoed senior managers to understand where the company was heading and to show their “buy-in” to the changes. We filmed individuals from all areas of the IT department, where they stated what their priorities were, how they were going to deliver against them and how they were going to build relationships with other departments.

They explained how they contributed to top line growth and how they were going to provide a streamlined service to their customers, relevant to the corporations needs. This did mean that some local services would be significantly changed or ceased all together.

How it is used

The finished film is being used to explain IT services at team meetings and focus groups.  It is available to the widest possibly viewing audience via their intranet. 

The technology we used combines a searchable ‘chapter system’ so that you can see the elements you want. Another feature is that it can be updated as progression occurs. It has also changed the perception of the IT department to that of a proactive agent of change within the business and a sophisticated communicator of complex issues.

The finished video was declared a great success, both within and outside the IT group, and helped the new organisation achieve their short and long term goals.

If you would like to talk to us about producing a promotional video for your business or are experiencing similar organisational challenges, please call Trevor Meadows on 01647 221360 to set up an initial consultation.