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Function documentationManagement of Processing Times

 

The Management of Processing Times enables you to monitor the response times of your service organization. You can use it to control the compliance with the agreements you have made with the partners involved in the performance of services.

Note Note

You can use this framework if the capabilities of the Service Level Agreements (SLA) do not sufficiently meet your specific requirements. For more information, see Service Level Agreements (SLA)

End of the note.

In the Processing Times Management context, the planned response times are target values for the durations of services that you have agreed with the different partners of service provision. With this framework, you can compare the planned with the actual response times. You can use this data to do the following:

  • Collect empirical values to improve your service portfolio and to have a valid data basis for your contract design

  • Optimize your services and the collaboration of your service teams

  • Optimize the scheduling of your workforce planning

  • Inform the processors of services at a glance when critical thresholds are reached

The Management of Processing Times is intended to help you optimize your processes and contract design. The Customizing of the processing times is not intended to establish the current situation as a standard. It is intended to provide you a tool that brings you successively closer to the best balance between the demands of your contract design and the individual needs of your service teams.

Prerequisites

You have activated the business function Management of Processing Times (CRM_ITSM_PROCESS_TIMES_MGMT).

You have made the settings in Customizing for Customer Relationship Management under Start of the navigation path Transactions Next navigation step Settings for Service Request Next navigation step Management of Processing Times. End of the navigation path

Features

  • When designing your contracts, you can assign the target response times to multiple objects. For example, you can agree with a customer different response times for the maintenance of the hardware than for the processing of software problems. With the Management of Processing Times, you can evaluate response times and service profiles assigned to the following system objects (SLA sources):

    • Service Contract

    • Service Product Item

    • Reference Objects: IBase, IBase Component, and IBase Text Component

    • Reference Objects: Object and Product

    • Business Partners (Sold-To Party)

    • Organizational Units (Sales)

    • Organizational Units (Service)

    In Customizing, you define a response time determination procedure. This procedure identifies automatically the SLA source to be used to retrieve the required response and service profile. For more information, see Determination of Response Times and Configure the User Interface.

  • You can define multiple processing times that cover different business points of view to measure the time that your service personnel spend to perform specific tasks.

    Example Example

    You define the following processing times:

    • A processing time that covers the agreements that you have made with your service teams (operational level agreements).

    • A processing time that covers the agreements that you have made with your customers (service level agreements).

    Both processing times can use different values to calculate and measure the performance of the services. The measurement results enable you to enhance the customer satisfaction and to optimize the scheduling of your service teams.

    End of the example.
  • For each processing time, you can define if it is to be displayed on the UI. The framework also allows using processing times only for statistical purposes.

  • You can define a customer-specific action management. For example, in action management you can define time periods that are not to be evaluated.

    Example Example

    You do not want to calculate times where you are waiting for a customer reaction.

    End of the example.
  • For each processing time, you can define up to 10 thresholds that indicate the progress of a service request. The graphical visualization of the thresholds enables you to see the status of a processing time at a glance.