The Use of Service Level Agreements in Operational Risk Management to Enhance Telecommunications Business Operations

In this paper, the authors discuss the need for enterprise risk management and operational risk management in organizations where substantial elements of the business processes are governed by a service level agreement (SLA). To ensure the operational risk management is properly integrated into the operational support systems, we recommend the use of active feedback to drive the link between the customer´s interpretation of the SLA and the operational view of the SLA. Further, a combined network-centric and customer-centric business model within the integrated operational risk management function is proposed that can enhance existing business models, such as the eTOM for telecommunication service providers.