In this service level agreement the following definitions shall apply:

Finance Systems: Finance Systems Team, part of Transformation Finance within Financial Services.

Customer: The College, and any employee thereof, being party to this Service Level Agreement.

Finance Systems will provide a comprehensive service to our customers which comprises of:

Close Management & Data Integrity

To liaise across multiple Finance and non-Finance teams to own and manage the ICIS-related aspects of the month-end and year-end financial close, to ensure that any issues are appropriately resolved and ultimately that agreed timeliness and data integrity standards are met.

To ensure that the various supporting daily and weekly data processing jobs that the Finance Systems team is responsible for are completed to standard, and to work with ICT and other Finance teams to resolve any resulting issues.

Internal Controls & User Access Management

To provide senior oversight of Finance’s overall Internal Controls Framework. To ensure that the appropriate control records are managed, monitored and maintained across Finance as a whole and that any proposed changes to that Framework are appropriately reviewed, approved and controlled.

To provide senior oversight of Finance’s overall systems User Access Management environment. To process changes to individuals’ and roles’ General Ledger Security configuration in accordance with appropriately- approved business instructions.

User Acceptance Test Management

To provide specialist advice and guidance to the rest of Finance om the performance of user acceptance testing (“UAT”) for significant system changes.

To manage cross-Finance UAT activity and perform selected functional testing.

Cross-Finance enabling Tools and Technology

To act as the Finance Business System Owner for a number of cross-Finance enabling tools and technologies, including but not limited to

• Atlassian Confluence
• Oracle Business Intelligence (OBIEE, local known as “ICA”)
• Oracle E-Business Suite Online Journals
• Oracle E-Business Suite Encumbrance Accounting
• Oracle Web Application Desktop Integrator (WebADI)
• TERMINALFOUR
• T-Plan

Business Intelligence & Data Analytics

To apply expertise in the College’s core Finance Business Intelligence tools, Oracle Business Intelligence (ICA) and Hyperion Essbase/SmartView to perform manipulation, analyses and reasoned interpretation of complex data, and to prepare reports.

To use data analytics techniques to generate valuable business insight and identify opportunities to amend working methods, processes and procedures to ensure continuous improvement in Finance efficiency and service.

We understand that each year your service priorities or requirements may change slightly, as part of agreeing this SLA we have agreed what can be provided within the this year’s available resources.

The following additional customer requirements and priorities have been agreed for 2017:

• Actively contribute to design, development, testing and upgrades of ICIS.
• Ensure services are delivered efficiently and effectively to all customers and partners
• To provide excellence in Customer support and encourage Self-Service
• To support cross finance projects.  
• To support the College’s transformation activities
• To comply with legislative requirements
• To improve performance across the service

Finance Systems Service is open Monday to Friday from 0900 to 1700 (excluding public holidays & college close days. Outside of these hours, customers calling Finance Systems may hear an automated response giving them:

• Finance Systems Service opening hours
• Details of how to email Finance Systems
• The option to leave a message detailing their customer query

Systems may also be shutdown exceptionally for some specific operations (e.g. migrations and installations). These operations will be scheduled and communicated to all customers in advance. The majority of scheduled systems shutdown will take place out of normal office hours or at weekends unless otherwise unavoidable.

The main channel for our customers to contact Finance Systems will be by email. The box on the right provides details of this. 

Provide an information and specialist guidance as required to all staff and respond to enquiries promptly in accordance with the College’s policies:

• Acknowledgement immediately by means of an auto response.
• Full response within 3 working days.

Calls that are not answered and subsequently leave a voicemail message will have their call returned

The KPI’s are defined as followed:

• Priority 1: Critical - Must be completed within 8 hours
• Priority 2: High - Must be completed within 2 working days
• Priority 3: Medium - Must be completed within 3 working days
• Priority 4: Low - Must be completed within 7 working days or as agreed with customer

KPIs are monitored monthly by the Finance Systems Manager.

The KPIs for Finance Systems are as follows:

Responsibilities outside of the SLAs

It is accepted that some of the duties of the Finance Systems Team fall outside of standard indicator measurements, primarily the team’s involvement in projects. For all project related work, the delivery timeframe will be agreed in advance with the Project Manager. Any change to from either the Project Manager or the Finance Systems Team will be agreed in advance and via communication to or from the Finance Systems Manager.

Customer requests outside of the SLAs

It is important that agreed Finance Systems processes, access points and targets are followed whenever possible. Customer requests outside of agreed SLAs should be an exception. 

Exceptions for individual pieces of work will be managed pragmatically as described below.

Urgent Customer Queries

Any request for priority, emergency or urgent handling of customer queries will be managed through the following process:

1. Customer contacts the Finance Systems Manager by phone/in person to transmit the urgent query. The Finance Systems Team Manager will then co-ordinate the response, determine the course of action and seek resolution. Should the Finance Systems Team Manager be unavailable, then contact should be sought from the Senior Finance Systems Analyst.
2. The customer subsequently emails finance.systems@imperial.ac.uk to raise the ticket, even if this happens to be after resolution.

Request for larger pieces of work will need to be approved by the Head of Finance Transformation taking into account the required resources, their costs and impact on delivery of other services within the SLA.

The SLA and the associated KPIs are reviewed and updated on an annual basis through the customer relationship process. Any revisions to the SLA and/or KPIs should be based on:

• Changes to the College’s Strategic objectives
• Changes in the priorities of Finance Systems customers – what they want to be tracked and reported
• Significant changes to the baseline of customer requirements e.g. a very large rise in service requirements
• Significant changes to Finance Systems customer base that change its economies of scale
• Significant changes to the services provided by Finance Systems Service
• Changes to Finance Systems reporting resources and capabilities
• Changes to targets based on experience of what is realistically achievable and targeted improvements.