A customer is preparing a supplier review. They ask the reseller for evidence of the work protecting their business: backups, delivered copies, security activity and any issues that needed attention. The reseller has information, but it is spread across several views.

Compiling the answer takes time away from serving that customer. The business manager then has to make sense of the detail before passing it to an auditor or another customer.

NetLeverage is adding a weekly SLA report to bring that account together. The aim is a useful record for the customer, with an accessible summary and the detail needed to examine individual servers.

Start with what the customer needs to know

A manager reviewing a service does not need a list of every technical message. They need to understand what work was performed, what required attention and where to look if a result needs explaining.

The planned report will cover the previous week’s backups, deliveries, security, certificates, events and gateway activity. Each customer is intended to receive its own report every Monday.

Putting those subjects together should make the service easier to discuss as a whole. The customer can consider the protection and operation of its business systems without first collecting separate reports for each part.

A useful review still involves judgement. The summary should help the customer identify questions, while the supporting detail provides the basis for answering them.

Keep the evidence behind the summary

A short management account and a detailed examination have different purposes. The business owner may need an overview; an auditor may need to look at what happened on a particular server.

The planned format combines a management summary with per-server detail. It is intended to be available on the Cloud Dashboard and by email, so the recipient can use it in the way that suits the review.

For the customer, the benefit is continuity between the explanation and its supporting records. A concern raised in the summary should lead to detail that can be examined, rather than another request to start gathering information.

That is especially useful when responsibility passes between people. The report provides a common account to discuss instead of leaving each participant with a different fragment of the history.

Give your customer something they can pass on

Software vendors and partners often stand between the hosting service and the business using the application. The customer looks to them for an explanation of the service, even when the underlying work is carried out elsewhere.

The planned report will allow vendors and partners to provide that account to their own customers under their own name. The value belongs in the customer conversation: evidence of service activity that the recipient can understand and use.

A customer responding to a government buyer or another organisation may need records of the work performed. A prepared report can support that response without making the customer compile every activity from scratch. Whether it meets a particular requirement still depends on the evidence that organisation asks for.

Choose a review rhythm that fits the business

Weekly reporting is the planned standard. Some businesses need a shorter reporting period because their service reviews are more frequent. A business-critical reporting option with a shorter period is planned as a paid addition.

The choice should follow the customer’s needs. Who reads the report? Which decisions does it support? What should happen when it raises a question? A more frequent report is useful only if somebody is ready to use it.

Software vendors and resellers will gain a clearer way to explain the work delivered to each customer. Business owners will gain a regular account they can review and share with the people who need it.

Talk to us about the reporting your customers need as the weekly SLA report is being added.