• Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.1-20
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• 2007

IT outsourcing becomes one of the important shills for managing diverse and complex information systems, SIA is considered as an one of the success factors for the successful outsourcing management. Since it helps to establish common goal and provides better visibility of trends and performance, the SLA process must go beyond mere measurement to include a methodology for the ongoing management of service levels, and for the continuous improvement of service activities, functions and processes. Despite SLA is one of the most important skills for the successful outsourcing, few studies have been conducted for academic as well as practical purpose. For this reason, The objective of this study is to develop an SLA's maturity model and empirically demonstrate how SLA's maturity level affects its Performance through SLA's maturity model. The major contributions of this study are in two areas. This study contributes to academicians as well as practitioners. First, from the academic perspectives this study tries investigating the maturity level of the SLA based on empirical data. Second, practitioners can self-test their firms' maturity level using the proposed model. The results of this study show that the SLA's maturity level affected positively SLA's performance. It is founded that the SLA's maturity level had a significant impact on SLA's performance.

• Journal of Information Technology Services
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.141-150
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• 2009

There are no objective standards for selection and improvement of SLA evaluation metrics for IT service. In this study, we analyze the current IT maturity models for selection and improvement of the metrics and then we derive them according to the maturity levels and propose the redesigned maturity model. To verify whether the model is applicable, we execute a case study based on the D company. We apply the proposed evaluation metrics of the maturity models to the D company and evaluate the metrics. We select a proper level of the D company and an improvement line after measuring evaluation metrics in the maturity level 2. We propose improvement guidelines of evaluation metrics which score is less than the improvement line's and derive SLA evaluation metrics. By using the SLA evaluation metrics for a year, we prove that the way of selection and improvement is useful.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.21-39
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• 2013

As the utilization of information technology and the turbulence of technological change increase in organizations, the adoption of IT outsourcing also grows to manage IT resource more effectively and efficiently. In this new way of IT management technique, service level management(SLM) process becomes critical to derive success from the outsourcing in the view of end users in organization. Even though much of the research on service level management or agreement have been done during last decades, the performance of the service level management process have not been evaluated in terms of final objectives of the management efforts or success from the view of end-users. This study explores the relationship between SLM maturity and IT outsourcing success from the users' point of view by a analytical case study in four client organizations under an IT outsourcing vendor, which is a member company of a major Korean conglomerate. For setting up a model for the analysis, previous researches on service level management process maturity and information systems success are reviewed. In particular, information systems success from users' point of view are reviewed based the DeLone and McLean's study, which is argued and accepted as a comprehensively tested model of information systems success currently. The model proposed in this study argues that SLM process maturity influences information systems success, which is evaluated in terms of information quality, systems quality, service quality, and net effect proposed by DeLone and McLean. SLM process maturity can be measured in planning process, implementation process and operation and evaluation process. Instruments for measuring the factors in the proposed constructs of information systems success and SL management process maturity were collected from previous researches and evaluated for securing reliability and validity, utilizing appropriate statistical methods and pilot tests before exploring the case study. Four cases from four different companies under one vendor company were utilized for the analysis. All of the cases had been contracted in SLA(Service Level Agreement) and had implemented ITIL(IT Infrastructure Library), Six Sigma and BSC(Balanced Scored Card) methods since last several years, which means that all the client organizations pursued concerted efforts to acquire quality services from IT outsourcing from the organization and users' point of view. For comparing the differences among the four organizations in IT out-sourcing sucess, T-test and non-parametric analysis have been applied on the data set collected from the organization using survey instruments. The process maturities of planning and implementation phases of SLM are found not to influence on any dimensions of information systems success from users' point of view. It was found that the SLM maturity in the phase of operations and evaluation could influence systems quality only from users' view. This result seems to be quite against the arguments in IT outsourcing practices in the fields, which emphasize usually the importance of planning and implementation processes upfront in IT outsourcing projects. According to after-the-fact observation by an expert in an organization participating in the study, their needs and motivations for outsourcing contracts had been quite familiar already to the vendors as long-term partners under a same conglomerate, so that the maturity in the phases of planning and implementation seems not to be differentiating factors for the success of IT outsourcing. This study will be the foundation for the future research in the area of IT outsourcing management and success, in particular in the service level management. And also, it could guide managers in practice in IT outsourcing management to focus on service level management process in operation and evaluation stage especially for long-term outsourcing contracts under very unique context like Korean IT outsourcing projects. This study has some limitations in generalization because the sample size is small and the context itself is confined in an unique environment. For future exploration, survey based research could be designed and implemented.