WHAT IS A EXPERIENCE LEVEL AGREEMENT?
A Experience Level Agreement (XLA) is a medium to long-term measure of effectiveness, used to govern an IT service provision.
This differs to a Service Level Agreement (SLA), which is a short-term measure of governing IT service provision. As such, SLAs encourage responsiveness and quick fixes.
An XLA-based IT service model tracks end-user experiences over time, allowing leaders to gain strategic insight into an organisation’s overall IT effectiveness and make better decisions about developing the IT estate. As IT is often the enabler for a workforce, an XLA system can be used to proactively manage the productive capabilities of staff.
SLAs and XLAs can work together in the same operational system but, as the latter is newer and less well adopted, many firms only govern IT with SLAs.
XLA BENEFITS
We believe SLA-only IT systems are outdated and encourage the wrong type of activity.
The short-term only focus of SLAs doesn’t promote root-cause analysis and provides little insight into what’s hindering employee productivity the most.
With that in mind, here’s what you can unlock when adding XLA to the traditional SLA system:
/ HOLISTIC VIEW
Get a better overall view of your IT estate from statistically significant data, not just data from tickets raised upon a problem.
/ Early warning insights
Identify issues earlier in their lifecycle, giving the ability to address them prior to any business disruption.
/ BETTER DECISIONS
Get clear and quantifiable justifications for any required change, based your users’ productive capabilities.
No more IT purchases based on gut feelings!
/ Insights in a week
Surveys from proven templates and honed methodologies can be turned around in no time, fast-tracking your way to a revolutionary IT system.
/ Prioritised productivity
Ensure engineer development time is best utilised from scoring data highlighting your firm’s strong and weak areas.
/ Competitive insight
When we’ve reached a critical mass for your industry, we can share your company’s user experience score relative to your industry.
That gives you the option to calculate the effort required to achieve competitive advantage.
HOW DOES AN X.L.A. SYSTEM WORK?
/ It’s easier than you might think
We send surveys to all users under the XLA, asking them a few easy-to-answer questions about their recent IT experiences. Our proprietary methodology allows us to translate those answers into a unique scoring system, which makes it easy for managers to prioritise proactive development.
Dedicated engineer time is bundled in with our XLA contract to start ticking off items from your prioritised development backlog. The cycle then repeats in, typically, six or twelve months – where you check developments have worked and gain insight on immerging issues, going full circle.
In the long-term, you get a constantly improving IT system and more productive employees.
