SINGAPORE - While most organizations have adopted formal service level agreements (SLA), they only meet these agreements 74 per cent of the time on average, according to new research by Forrester Consulting.

The research - commissioned by Compuware Corporation – found that the primary reason for missing SLAs is that the business unit has expectations out of the reach of IT.

The Forrester study found that 41% of respondents agreed that their insight into service levels is basic, and that they don't regularly provide SLA information to executives. Forty per cent of those surveyed agreed that their service level reporting lacks information that their executives have requested.

"By relying solely on technology-focused metrics, IT is missing an opportunity to engage in effective dialogue with the business to move toward proactive service management," said Steve Tack, Vice President, ITSM, Compuware.

End user judgment

According to Jean-Pierre Garbani, Vice President and Principal Analyst with Forrester Research, "The ultimate judge of IT and business alignment is the end user: If alignment is viewed as conformity to user expectations in terms of availability, performance, usability, and accuracy, then monitoring end user performance is the only way IT knows that it is meeting these expectations."

When asked about the cost of poor application performance, 57% of respondents in the commissioned study stated increased costs to the business as a result; 48% reported that poor performance resulted in lost revenue. The report said this demonstrates a clear understanding of the potentially dramatic financial impact resulting from poorly managed IT service.

Other reasons given for financial impact to the business include negative impacts to external customer satisfaction (48%) disruptions in production (42%) and a negative impact on sales performance.

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