Role: Service Delivery Manager (SaaS)

Document ID: SW-QMS-ROLE-002-v1.0
Effective Date: [TBD]
Review Date: [TBD]
Reports to: CEO or Service Owner
Current Assignment: [TBD - Name to be assigned by management]

Role Summary

The Service Delivery Manager is responsible for the operational delivery of Swedwise's SaaS Platform service. This role ensures service availability, performance, and quality meet SLA commitments, manages customer relationships, coordinates operational teams, and drives service improvement initiatives.

This role is the "service owner" accountable for end-to-end SaaS service delivery, bridging customers, technical operations, support teams, and management.

Time Allocation

• Ongoing Operations: 60-80% of working time (full-time or primary focus role)
• Service Improvement: 15-20% of working time
• Customer Engagement: Variable (10-30% depending on customer base)
• Incident Management: Variable (higher during major incidents)

This is expected to be a full-time or primary-focus role as the SaaS service scales. During MVP phase, may be combined with Customer Success or Operations leadership.

Key Responsibilities

1. Service Level Management

• Own achievement of SLA commitments (99.9% uptime target)
• Monitor service performance against SLA metrics continuously
• Generate and distribute SLA reports to customers (monthly)
• Identify SLA breaches and coordinate remediation
• Manage SLA exceptions and customer communications
• Drive improvements to consistently exceed SLA targets
• Review and recommend SLA revisions based on performance data
• Coordinate SLA negotiations for new or renewing customers

2. Customer Relationship Management (Operational)

• Act as primary operational contact for SaaS customers
• Conduct regular service review meetings with customers (quarterly)
• Address customer concerns about service quality or availability
• Manage customer expectations and communications
• Coordinate customer-specific service requests and changes
• Build trusted relationships with customer technical and business stakeholders
• Ensure customer satisfaction with service delivery
• Gather customer feedback and requirements for service improvements

3. Service Operations Coordination

• Coordinate day-to-day service operations across teams:
  • L1/L2 Support team (incident handling)
  • L3 Technical team (complex issue resolution, changes)
  • Infrastructure team (platform operations, monitoring)
  • Development team (feature delivery, bug fixes)
• Ensure clear communication and handoffs between teams
• Monitor operational metrics and team performance
• Facilitate operational meetings and service huddles
• Coordinate on-call rotations and escalation procedures
• Ensure operational documentation is current and accessible

4. Incident Management Oversight

• Oversee incident management process for the SaaS service
• Act as Incident Manager for major incidents
• Ensure incidents are prioritized and resolved per SLA
• Coordinate incident response across technical teams
• Communicate incident status to customers and management
• Lead post-incident reviews and ensure lessons learned
• Track incident trends and drive preventive actions
• Ensure incident documentation and knowledge base are maintained
• Coordinate with CISO on security incidents

5. Change Management (Service Changes)

• Oversee change management process for SaaS service
• Review and approve changes to production environment
• Ensure changes follow established change procedures
• Coordinate change scheduling with customers and operations
• Assess change risk and approve go/no-go decisions
• Monitor change success rates and rollback procedures
• Ensure emergency changes are properly authorized and documented
• Track change-related incidents and drive improvements

6. Service Performance Monitoring

• Monitor service availability, performance, and capacity continuously
• Review service dashboards and alerting systems
• Analyze performance trends and capacity usage
• Identify performance degradation early and coordinate response
• Track key service metrics:
  • Uptime percentage
  • Response times
  • Throughput and transaction volumes
  • Error rates
  • Customer-reported issues
• Generate performance reports for management and customers
• Coordinate capacity planning with infrastructure team

7. Problem Management

• Oversee problem management process to address recurring issues
• Coordinate root cause analysis for repeated incidents
• Drive permanent solutions to known problems
• Maintain problem register and known error database
• Prioritize problems based on customer impact and frequency
• Work with technical teams to implement permanent fixes
• Communicate problem status to affected customers
• Ensure workarounds are documented and communicated

8. Service Improvement (Continual Service Improvement)

• Identify opportunities for service improvement
• Coordinate service improvement initiatives
• Implement process improvements in service operations
• Drive automation to improve efficiency and reliability
• Facilitate service improvement workshops
• Monitor effectiveness of improvement actions
• Report on improvement initiatives to management
• Promote best practices from ITIL/ISO 20000

9. Escalation Management

• Act as escalation point for customer issues
• Manage escalations from customers to technical teams
• Coordinate escalations to management when necessary
• Ensure timely and effective resolution of escalated issues
• Communicate escalation status to all stakeholders
• Prevent escalations through proactive service management
• Track escalation trends and address root causes

10. Vendor and Partner Coordination (OpenText, Infrastructure)

• Coordinate with OpenText on product support and issues
• Manage relationship with infrastructure provider (Entiros AB)
• Escalate issues to vendors when internal resolution not possible
• Track vendor SLAs and performance
• Coordinate vendor changes and maintenance windows
• Ensure vendor documentation and support contacts are current
• Participate in vendor roadmap and planning discussions

11. Service Reporting and Communication

• Prepare weekly operational reports for management
• Generate monthly service reports for customers (SLA reports)
• Communicate service status, incidents, and changes
• Maintain service status page for customers
• Coordinate planned maintenance communications
• Report service performance at management reviews
• Provide metrics for quality and security reporting
• Ensure transparent communication with all stakeholders

12. Onboarding and Offboarding Coordination

• Coordinate customer onboarding from operational perspective
• Ensure smooth handover from sales/projects to operations
• Verify operational readiness before customer go-live
• Coordinate customer offboarding and data handover
• Ensure onboarding/offboarding follows documented procedures
• Gather lessons learned from onboarding experiences
• Continuously improve onboarding processes

13. Compliance and Audit Support

• Ensure service operations comply with IMS policies and procedures
• Support ISO audits with evidence of service management
• Maintain operational records for compliance purposes
• Coordinate with CISO on security compliance for SaaS service
• Ensure operational controls meet ISO 9001, 27001, and 20000 requirements
• Support customer audits of service operations
• Track and remediate compliance findings

Authority

The Service Delivery Manager has authority to:

Operational Decision-Making Authority

• Approve routine operational changes to SaaS service
• Prioritize incidents and service requests
• Allocate operational resources to incidents and problems
• Declare major incidents and invoke incident procedures
• Approve service maintenance windows (within approved schedule)
• Reject changes that pose unacceptable risk to service
• Temporarily adjust operational procedures in emergencies
• Make operational commitments to customers (within SLA parameters)

Escalation Authority

• Escalate service issues to CEO or Service Owner
• Invoke emergency response procedures for major incidents
• Request additional resources during incidents or capacity issues
• Escalate customer issues that require management decision
• Escalate vendor performance issues to management
• Require support from any technical team for service incidents

Customer Communication Authority

• Communicate service status to customers
• Issue incident notifications and maintenance announcements
• Conduct customer service reviews
• Address customer complaints about service quality
• Make operational commitments within SLA framework

Limitations

• Major changes to service (features, pricing, SLA) require management approval
• Contractual changes or SLA revisions require Sales/Management approval
• Significant expenditures require CEO approval
• Strategic service decisions rest with Service Owner/Management
• Cannot modify agreed SLAs without customer and management approval

Required Competencies

Education and Qualifications

Minimum:

• Bachelor's degree in IT, Computer Science, Business, or related field
• OR equivalent practical experience in service management or IT operations (5+ years)

Preferred:

• Formal service management training (ITIL, ISO 20000)
• SaaS or cloud operations experience
• Customer-facing service management experience

Professional Certifications (Recommended)

Highly Recommended:

• ITIL 4 Foundation (minimum) or ITIL Expert
• ISO 20000 Foundation or Lead Implementer
• ISO 9001 understanding (Quality Management)

Valuable:

• ITIL Service Operation or Continual Service Improvement
• Project Management (PMP, PRINCE2, Agile)
• Cloud certifications (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud)
• ISO 27001 Foundation (for security context)
• Customer Success or Account Management certification

Experience

Essential:

• Minimum 5 years experience in IT service management or operations
• Experience managing service delivery against SLAs
• Customer-facing service management experience
• Incident and problem management experience
• Understanding of SaaS or cloud service operations
• Experience coordinating cross-functional technical teams

Desirable:

• Previous Service Delivery Manager or Service Owner role
• Experience with OpenText products (Exstream, Communications)
• Experience in Kubernetes or cloud-native environments
• Multi-tenant SaaS operations experience
• Experience with monitoring and observability tools
• ISO 20000 or ISO 9001 certification project experience
• Customer onboarding experience

Technical Skills

• Understanding of SaaS architecture and operations
• Familiarity with cloud infrastructure (Kubernetes, containers)
• Knowledge of monitoring and observability tools
• Understanding of CI/CD and DevOps practices
• Basic understanding of networking and security
• Familiarity with ITSM tools and ticketing systems
• SQL and database concepts (for troubleshooting)
• Scripting for automation (desirable)

Service Management Skills

• ITIL/ISO 20000 process knowledge
• Incident and problem management
• Change and release management
• SLA management and reporting
• Service improvement methodologies
• Root cause analysis techniques
• Capacity and availability management
• Service reporting and metrics

Customer Management Skills

• Customer relationship management
• Stakeholder communication and management
• Expectation management
• Negotiation and conflict resolution
• Customer advocacy and empathy
• Service review facilitation
• Complaint handling
• Customer satisfaction management

Leadership and Communication Skills

• Team coordination and leadership
• Cross-functional collaboration
• Crisis management and decision-making under pressure
• Excellent written and verbal communication (English and Swedish)
• Presentation skills
• Facilitation and meeting management
• Influence and persuasion
• Escalation management

Personal Attributes

• Customer-focused mindset
• Calm under pressure during incidents
• Proactive and anticipatory
• Detail-oriented with systems thinking
• Collaborative and team-oriented
• Accountable and takes ownership
• Continuous improvement mindset
• Flexible and adaptable to change
• Strong work ethic and reliability
• Problem-solver with "can-do" attitude

Key Relationships

Stakeholder	Nature of Interaction	Frequency
CEO/Service Owner	Reports to; escalates strategic issues; receives resources	Weekly
Customers	Service reviews; incident communications; relationship management	Weekly/Monthly
L1/L2 Support Team	Coordinates incident handling; provides guidance	Daily
L3 Technical Team	Coordinates complex issue resolution and changes	Daily
Infrastructure Team	Monitors platform performance; coordinates maintenance	Daily
Development Team	Coordinates feature delivery and bug fixes	Weekly
Quality Lead	Reports service quality; collaborates on improvement	Weekly
CISO	Coordinates security incidents and security controls	Weekly
Customer Success	Aligns on customer satisfaction and account health	Weekly
Sales Team	Provides operational input to sales; onboarding handover	As needed
PMO/Projects	Coordinates customer onboarding and implementation	During onboarding
OpenText	Escalates product issues; coordinates support	As needed
Entiros AB	Coordinates infrastructure issues and maintenance	As needed

Relationship with Other IMS Roles

Quality Lead

• Collaboration Model: Service Delivery Manager delivers service quality; Quality Lead oversees quality management
• Division of Responsibility: Service Delivery Manager owns operational service delivery; Quality Lead monitors customer satisfaction and process quality
• Interaction: Regular reporting on service performance; joint customer satisfaction reviews

CISO

• Collaboration Model: Complementary roles with shared responsibility for secure service delivery
• Division of Responsibility: Service Delivery Manager owns service operations; CISO owns security controls and incident response (security aspects)
• Interaction: Close collaboration on security incidents; security considerations in changes; compliance monitoring

IMS Owner

• Collaboration Model: Service Delivery Manager implements IMS processes in service operations
• Division of Responsibility: Service Delivery Manager ensures operational compliance; IMS Owner coordinates overall IMS
• Interaction: Provides evidence of IMS implementation; participates in audits and management reviews

Performance Indicators

KPI	Target	Measurement Method
Service Availability (Uptime)	>= 99.9%	Monitoring system data (monthly)
SLA Achievement Rate	100% of SLA metrics met	SLA report (monthly)
Customer Satisfaction (Service)	>= 4.0/5.0	Quarterly service review surveys
Critical Incident Response Time	100% within 15 minutes	Incident management system
Incident Resolution (P1)	95% within target time	Incident tracking system
Change Success Rate	>= 95% changes successful without rollback	Change register
Customer-Reported Incidents	<5 per month (trending down)	Ticketing system
Major Incident Frequency	<1 per quarter	Incident classification data
Service Review Completion	100% of customers receive quarterly review	Service review schedule
SLA Report Timeliness	100% of reports delivered on time	Report delivery tracking

Delegation and Backup

During Planned Absence

Responsibilities are delegated in the following manner:

• Incident management: Delegated to L3 Technical Lead or designated deputy
• Customer communications: Delegated to Customer Success Manager or deputy
• Operational decisions: Delegated to L3 Technical Lead with CEO escalation path
• Service reviews: Rescheduled or conducted by Customer Success

Deputy Role

A deputy Service Delivery Manager should be designated from:

• L3 Technical Lead
• Customer Success Manager
• Senior Operations Engineer

The deputy should:

• Receive ITIL and service management training
• Shadow Service Delivery Manager during incidents
• Participate in customer service reviews
• Understand SLA commitments and escalation procedures
• Have access to all operational systems and documentation

Success Factors

The Service Delivery Manager will be successful when:

1. SLA Achievement: Swedwise consistently meets or exceeds SLA commitments
2. Customer Satisfaction: Customers are highly satisfied with service quality and responsiveness
3. Service Stability: Service is reliable with minimal incidents and disruptions
4. Proactive Management: Issues are identified and resolved before customer impact
5. Efficient Operations: Operational processes are efficient and effective
6. Team Coordination: Technical teams work cohesively to deliver service
7. Continuous Improvement: Service quality and efficiency improve over time
8. Transparency: Service performance is visible and transparently reported
9. Incident Response: Incidents are handled quickly and professionally
10. Customer Trust: Customers trust Swedwise to deliver mission-critical services

Document Control

Version	Date	Author	Changes
1.0	[TBD]	[Author]	Initial release

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Approval

Role	Name	Signature	Date
CEO
Service Owner
CISO