Implementing social platforms will help increase awareness of service-level agreements (SLAs) and provide ongoing monitoring, according to Ovum research analyst Adam Holtby.

Documents qualifying the level of service IT delivers to businesses, SLAs can deliver value to both IT and business departments, he explains, and by making SLAs more visible and accessible, they can become a more useful and active resource.

The growth of social enterprise tools such as Yammer are not only making SLAs more visible, but also provide a means to gain relevant and real-time feedback on them. Additionally, encouraging feedback through social capabilities can further enhance the value offered by SLAs, while ensuring that the assurances they document remain relevant, explains Holtby.

He says: “This is certainly an evolution in the way that service-level agreements can be monitored. Through social platforms, service-level management can more closely monitor the opinion of customers relying on the associated services, giving them greater insight into whether an SLA may need a formal review. This instant method of monitoring can be very useful in increasing the value provided by IT to the business.”