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| David Cuykendall Click for Index Page |
Service Level Expectations
At a business level, service level expectations strongly influence connections. So, the capability model is also based on the specific analysis of service levels and the notion that if changes in service levels can be achieved by changing who does the work (that is, evaluating different options of sourcing, among them outsourcing) the decision is made on an equal basis across all capabilities in the company.
This allows businesses to exchange services without getting mired in the details of how the process is performed. For example, the company ADP can be used for the Pay Employees capability but there is no need to know all the details of how ADP processes the payroll — the only thing that matters is that defined service levels are met or exceeded.
A Quick Illustration
You manage your relationship with your telephone provider simply by knowing the capabilities they should provide and the service levels to which they should perform. You only care what they do, not how they accomplish it. There is a discrete number of capabilities they offer and a certain level of services that they contract to accomplish. To you, carriers are interchangeable based entirely on the service level they provide. If they don't perform you can take your business somewhere else where your service level expectations and actual delivery are more reliably met.
You do not know the details of the process of delivering the dial tone to your cell phone, yet you can still very effectively manage the relationship and performance outcomes. The same is true for capabilities, they represent a level of abstraction where you can exchange services and manage rules for performance.
