Incident Management Process

Purpose

The purpose of the Incident Management Process is to restore normal service operation as quickly as possible, minimize the adverse impact on business operations, and ensure that the best possible levels of service quality and availability are maintained.

What is an Incident

An Incident is defined as:

An unplanned interruption to an IT Service.
A reduction in the quality of an IT Service.
Failure of a Configuration Item that has not yet impacted service.

Scope

The Incident Management process effectively and efficiently manages all Incidents that are not part of the Standard Operation of a service. Incident Management includes any event that disrupts or which could disrupt service.

Objective

The objectives of the Incident Management Process include:

Restoring normal service operation as quickly as possible.
Minimizing the adverse impact on business operations.
Ensure that the best possible service quality and availability levels are maintained according to agreed Service Level Agreements (SLAs).
Ensuring that we use standardized methods and procedures for efficient and prompt handling of Incidents, including logging, assessing, documenting, communicating, and resolving.
Increase the visibility and communication of incidents to the business and support staff.
Maintain user satisfaction with the quality of services.

Who can raise an Incident?

Authorized contacts of SoftwareOne customers.
Automatically triggered alerts based on system failures.

Incident Reporting Source

Customers can report an Incident through:

Phone
E-mail
SoftwareOne’s Cloud Management Portal
System-generated alerts/events

To raise an incident with a P1 priority, customers must raise the incident via the telephone.

Customers who raise a Major Incident via the telephone will receive an immediate response from SoftwareOne.

Incident Management Policy Statement

The life cycle of incidents shall be defined in the Incident Management Process.
All incidents shall be recorded into Incident Management systems/tools.
All incidents shall be categorized and prioritized based on the Impact and Urgency of the Incident.
The incident management process shall ensure that the affected service returns to normal as quickly as possible.
The customer/requestor shall be informed of the status of the incident throughout the life cycle of the incident.
Upon resolving an incident, the requestor shall be notified that the incident has been resolved and service restored to normal business function.
Incidents will not be moved to a Resolved status until Service has been restored.
The Support Team shall be responsible for resolving all Incidents as much as possible before escalating to the next level of support.
An Incident in a Closed state should never be re-opened. If the requestor raises concerns about the provided resolution, open a new Incident and relate it to the previous incident.
Issues identified directly by the Support Teams must create an Incident in ServiceNow to record and track the issue.
SoftwareOne reserves the right to close tickets awaiting customer input for over three days automatically.

Roles

Role	Responsibility
Technical Agent	Welcome authorised callers as an entry point in the Incident Management process. Categorize and prioritise the Incident. Gather required information to assess and analyze the issue. Perform investigation and diagnosis of Incidents. Provide technical communication to the user regarding quick fixes. Resolve or provide a workaround to the customer and try to restore regular service as quickly as possible. Understand the Service Level and execute accordingly. Internal and external communication of the incident status, engaging next level support. Resolve and recover assigned incidents. Notify and verify the resolution with the requestor. Once the incident is resolved, close the incident in agreement with the requestor.
Incident Manager	Assign unassigned Incidents to an appropriate Support Agent. Overseeing all aspects of the incident management process from evaluation to resolution Escalation to various support teams as necessary Notify Customer/Internal SoftwareONE Stakeholders as necessary
Service Manager	Proactive involvement in an emergency or critical events impacting client organization Keeping the client updated on the resolution progress of E1, P1 & S1 tickets Providing the RCA shared by the support team Sharing suggestions to avoid such instances in the future based on RCA and recommendations from the support team Open conference bridge with the customer, as applicable

Process

RACI Matrix: Incident Management

Key:

R=Responsible
A=Accountable
C=Consulted
I=Informed

Stages	Requestor (Customer)	Technical Agent	Incident Manager	Subject Matter Expert
Review ticket to understand the Incident	I	A/R	C	C
Categorize & Prioritize	I	A/R	C	C
Assessment & Investigation	I	A/R	C	C
Identify Resolution	I	A/R	C	C
Implement, Verify & Test solution	I	A/R	C	C
Customer/Stakeholders communication during the problem lifecycle	I	A/R	C	I
Open a ticket with Vendor	I	A/R	C	C
Follow up with Vendor	I	A/R	C	I
Create Knowledge Base Article		A/R	C	C

Priority Matrix and SLAs

Please refer to the Service Levels Section of the User Guide for details of how priorities are calculated and the corresponding SLA

Incident States

State	Description
New	The customer submits the incident, and the ticket has not been assigned to an Agent.
Active	The ticket is assigned to an Agent.
In Progress	The Agent is currently working on the incident.
On Hold: Awaiting Caller	Awaiting information or confirmation from the requestor. Note that tickets in this state for over 3 days will be automatically closed.
On Hold: Awaiting Vendor	When information is requested, or action is required from the vendor.
On Hold: Awaiting Change	When a change is created to resolve the incident.
On Hold: Awaiting Problem	When a problem ticket is created to perform an RCA.
On Hold: Awaiting Internal Action	When information is requested or action is required from internal SoftwareOne teams.
On Hold: Awaiting Vendor Product Group	When information is requested or action is required from the Vendor product group.
Resolved	When the incident is resolved and is under review by the customer.
Closed	The state is changed from Resolved to Closed automatically after three business days of the resolve date (if no input is received from the requestor during the time frame).