Enterprise IT Vendor Relationship Management SLA

Governance Issues when Enterprise SLAs are mis-applied to supplemental services-
Can see no issue with this SLA as it applies strictly to UNM IT and its vendor relations.  However, a form of this Enterprise SLA has mistakenly been interjected into department supplemental purchases.  The power of a central authority to delay or stop appropriate departmental purchases should be regulated by the fair application of the appropriate SLAs.  Ad hoc or incorrect application of Enterprise SLAs to departmental or supplemental services will subvert  the UNM SLA process -which is to say that departments, Purchasing, and UNM IT should all be absolutely clear on which SLAs apply to what purchases.
The history below is meant to illustrate that purchasing intervention by UNM IT, whether mistaken or appropriate, can delay critical departmental purchases, nullify discounts and maintenance agreements between departments and vendors, and ultimately interfere with the internal operations and governance of UNM departments.  Timeliness is crucial to the purchasing department/customer.
•    What happens if a department’s grant is affected or lost due to delays caused by UNM IT purchase reviews?
•    IT Agents could discuss where and how UNM IT interjects into purchases.  On larger questions of governance, IT Agents with coordination from IT SAC can provide leadership.  This is an opportunity to revive IT Agents and get campus-wide buy-in for SLAs and standard development.
•    When UNM IT, the service owner, interjects into department purchases, a separate Purchasing SLA should immediately trigger with some of the following conditions:
•    Service owner has 3 business days upon notification from Purchasing or the Customer to request documents for review.
•    All documents for review should be submitted to the customer at the same time, within the 3 business day window.
•    Once submitted, service owner has 3 business days to review the documents submitted by the customer or vendor.  Within that window, customer should be notified whether documents are accepted or rejected.  If rejected, detailed response for rejection to be submitted by service owner to customer.
•    Additional document submissions by customer create 3 day window for review by service owner.
•    Customer or Vendor and service owner will likely disagree on some rejections, so some sort of arbitration process needs to be clarified.
•    If service owner fails to complete review in a timely manner and the purchase is subsequently canceled by Purchasing or the vendor, who will pay costs to re-initiate a purchase or maintenance agreement if discounts or other incentives have been lost due to the cancellation?
History of delayed department purchase:
•    Department submitted PO, Purchasing noted that Department needed to complete security review on Dec 17th, 2015.  No document was provided to the department.
•    Department asked for guidance on this new process December 21st via Help.UNM
•    Without explanation, ticket was put on Hold
•    January 4, 2016 – Department inquires as to Hold, told to submit Security Questionnaire
•    Jan 7 – Security Questionnaire submitted and accepted
•    Jan 11-26 – Department and Purchasing inquire on status multiple times via Help.UNM and calling 7-5757 – no response from UNM IT
•    Jan 26 – After repeated requests from Purchasing, UNM IT declares the purchase –mistakenly – a duplication of Enterprise services
•    UNM IT then requests customer and vendor complete 23 page Enterprise Vendor Questionnaire.  No explanation given for why this document was not provided to Department on Jan 7, the same day that the Security Questionnaire was provided.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 2 months ago by ccovey01.

Do we have a list of Enterprise IT Vendors somewhere? How does a vendor get added or removed from this list? What happens to departmental agreements when/if new Enterprise Vendors are defined?

Does this SLA apply to anyone other than the “Central IT” unit?

2.1: How is redundancy determined and how is it eliminated? What is the process for stakeholder involvement in that decision? “<span style=”line-height: 1.5;”>Reduce and eliminate redundant Enterprise IT contracts;”</span>

2.2 Service Level Performance is left blank. My understanding of an SLA is that it should have measurements, metrics and consequences for not meeting target service standards.

Perhaps this is hard to define because it is more of an operational function of the central IT department than a customer facing service. If that is the case, I’m not sure why it’s being defined with an SLA.

Is there a definition of an External Vendor? For example, under 2.1 Service Scope, there’s a reference to “external entities”. Further down in that section, the list of services includes Network capacity and connectivity. Section 2.1.2 speaks to boundaries and states that the service features and functions are “restricted to state and federal government entities”. Therefore, if a state or federal government organization is located on the UNM campus and uses the CDCN (is it still called that?) but is not a “vendor” in the traditional sense of the word, does this SLA apply?

Chad — Hi, sorry for not responding earlier to your comments. I am trying to review all comments related to customer service!  Please, at anytime you are not receiving appropriate communication or timely services, feel free to reach out to me.  I will do my best to get things moving!