The end of SLAs: why experience is the new measure of IT success

Date:
Tue, 01 Sep 2026 10:24:23 +0000

Description:
SLAs can't capture the full picture here's why experience is becoming IT's true success metric.

FULL STORY ======================================================================Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Threads Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter Ten years from now, it will
feel astonishing that there was around a fifty-year gap between the mainstreaming of Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and Experience Level Agreements (XLAs). While SLAs have been common since the 1980s, its only in the last few years that XLAs have started to gain momentum. Maurice van den Driessche Social Links Navigation

Senior Solution Consultant at Nexthink. The imminent adoption of ISO 20000-18 will propel XLAs even further. To comply with the new standard, organizations will be required to manage the digital experiences of both customers and users, integrating Experience Management (XM) into existing governance, management, and implementation processes. Suddenly, demonstrating that your business delivers good digital experiences isnt just an esoteric
nice-to-have, but a critical part of winning new contracts. But although the idea of XLAs has been around for a while, few organizations have the institutional knowledge of how to practically implement these changes. Latest Videos From TechRadar Watch full video here: Why bother with XLAs? Before that, its worth asking why XLAs are necessary in the first place. Understanding what SLAs are missing is essential before starting to reformulate existing processes.

The simple answer is that what a system shows and what a user experiences are not the same thing. It doesnt matter if a cloud application is technically available if the experience is so glitchy that you abandon it after twenty seconds to never use it again. You may like Think your customers will love your shiny new AI chatbot? You might be in for a bad surprise Why operational excellence now defines mobile service quality Enterprises and the customer experience problem

Thats not to say that SLAs are now useless. Metrics like performance, ticket resolution times, and system availability still matter theyre just no longer sufficient. You need to know whether your system is functioning, but you also need to know if an application is unresponsive for the user.

XLAs offer a different framing for the relationship between supplier and customer. Looking at metrics, like session stability during peak trading hours, tells you a lot more about how employees are able to perform than many SLA numbers. Are you a pro? Subscribe to our newsletter Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed! Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners
or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms &
Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. What does measuring experience mean? It can be hard to know where to start as experience is a
very broad term. Plus, its hard to measure something if you havent even defined it yet. As a result, there are hundreds of different metrics for experience measurement which fall, broadly speaking, into three main buckets:

Technical Data (T-Data): The technical performance of the product or service (for example, outages, freezes, crashes, etc.) provided by the Nexthink DEX platform.

Operational Data (O-Data): How well a given service performed and how well it was supported, which is usually captured through SLAs/KPIs. What to read next UK businesses don't have a CX innovation problem. They have an operational readiness problem. Cybersecurity needs a new KPI: it's time to measure our ability to adapt Why operational systems struggle to keep up with real-world execution

Sentiment Data (X-Data): How the users themselves describe their feelings / perception (the truth according to them) toward a digital tool or service.

When considering how to reengineer existing processes to be ISO compliant,
its essential to have data sources from all three. Operational data is
already generally well-covered by SLAs, and sentiment data is achieved via targeted survey campaigns that capture examples of technical issues. Its the technical data that can be tricky for organizations attempting to use XLAs.

The technical data is essential because it brings together complete
visibility across every endpoint and interaction, which means faster diagnostics. If an organization spots that users of a given browser are regularly having issues and can cross-reference that with the applications most disrupted, it can quickly identify root causes and implement remediations.

Moreover, this technical data is critical to pre-emptive and preventative IT by flagging which specific devices are non-compliant with the latest updates. Embracing DEXOps However, one of the key mistakes that businesses make when bringing in Digital Employee Experience (DEX) platforms for the first time is starting by asking what can this platform do? This is the wrong question to ask.

As the new ISO itself attests, ITs job is no longer simply pushing
technology, but delivering the services and infrastructure that employees
need in ways that improve outcomes across the business through an experience-centric approach.

This is the core principle at the heart of DEXOps, a philosophy that takes experience as the central pillar of an employees day (and therefore their productivity and engagement).

DEXOps operationalizes experience by starting with the immediate concerns and frustrations of individual business units, understanding what the
consequences of these issues are, and finding technological solutions that eliminate the root causes of digital friction.

Rather than focusing on technical capabilities, IT leaders should start by asking other business units:

What are your teams top priorities?

Where are you experiencing friction or risk?

What does success look like for you and how is that measured?

Do you know what value you bring to the overall business?

Its amazing how much more engaged other parts of the business will be when, instead of diving into ISO compliance requirements, the conversations revolve around how their most pressing challenges can be fixed. XLAs are an opportunity as well as a challenge Many businesses immediately tend to view new regulation as a burden. But ISO 20000-18 and the increasing role of XLAs also represent an opportunity to accelerate the changes already happening to the role of the IT department. The shift from infrastructure to experience is tricky and requires businesses to be open to significant realignment across traditional roles, responsibilities, and metrics.

Some organizations will continue to ignore the importance of experience, but the broader changes that have driven the drafting and implementation of the regulations are here to stay. Businesses that see the new standard as an opportunity to use regulation to create a competitive advantage will have a crucial head start on those that are still stuck in the old, outdated, reflexive IT model. We've featured the best business intelligence platform. This article was produced as part of TechRadar Pro Perspectives , our channel to feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today.

The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/pro/perspectives-how-to-submit



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