Volume, capacity and SLA: the method’s three blocks
Renew’s SLA calibration follows a conceptual foundation built on three blocks.
Volume. Average execution time per operation multiplied by the monthly volume received yields the total effort required, which is converted into FTE (full-time-equivalent headcount).
Capacity. The effort calculated from volume is adjusted by three percentages: the team’s real productivity, target utilization (the ideal sits around 85%, to leave slack without idleness), and a safety margin to absorb variation without forming a queue. The goal of capacity is simple to state and hard to get right without a method: serve incoming demand without forming a queue.
SLA. With volume and capacity calculated, the service level agreement becomes an agreement backed by a number: turnaround in days and the percentage served within that turnaround, agreed between the client and the internal provider. For example, 95% served within 3 business days.
Three points that set the method apart
- Peaks drawn from real historical data. The monthly average hides what happens on critical days — month-end close, seasonal peak, a campaign. That is when the queue forms, and a delay of a few days turns into a queue of weeks if sizing only looks at the average.
- Business days versus calendar days. The distinction between the two is explicit in every one of Renew’s SLA agreements, precisely to avoid the most common misunderstanding between the SSC and the internal client: counting weekends and holidays as elapsed turnaround when the agreement is stated in business days.
- Daily queue simulation (FIFO). Instead of a monthly average that hides real behavior, the simulation shows the queue building up and being processed day by day, under a first-come, first-served regime — revealing whether the queue actually clears or keeps accumulating.
Once the operation is live, volume and time data can be connected directly to the client’s system, updating the per-service analysis every period with no manual intervention.
SLA definition training
Renew offers training on how to define a balanced service level agreement — neither oversized (costs too much) nor undersized (forms a queue) — covering the full cycle of building and tracking an SLA in 11 steps, along with the SSC’s internal KPIs, both operational and tactical, that sustain the agreement once it is signed.