8600-331 Understanding Support Services Operations in an Organisation

Unit Overview

8600-331 Understanding Support Services Operations in an organisation is a unit within the ILM Level 3 module that helps the learners pursuing the unit to understand the support services operations that may affect the organisation. Organisations within an industry require support services that boost the ability of the organisation to successfully engage in the production processes as well as the distribution of services and products to the market. There are different principles that guide the interaction between the organisation and these support services that may be required within the organisation.

Leaders must show understanding of these principles that govern the support services operations and the interaction with organisations hence ensuring that these operations are compliant with the set legal frameworks and standards.This unit helps to understand products and services required by the organisation, such as banking and insurance, and the processes guiding the acquisition of these support services, which include the legal frameworks and organisational policies.

8600-331 Understanding Support Services Operations in an organisation is a unit aimed at building this knowledge among the first-line managers ensuring that they are able to contribute to the process of ensuring organisation objectives in terms of performance and compliance are achieved. This unit is taught in 7 hours of guided learning and contributes 3 credit values towards the accomplishment of the ILM Level 3 module, making it one of the main units within the module.

Suitability of the Unit

The sport service operations are required by all stakeholders of the organisation ranging from the shareholders to the employees within the organisation. They need to understand the range of support services in terms so hard and soft services and the legal frameworks guiding the acquisition of these services hence ensuring that they are able to acquire the necessary resources and services that are required in their areas of operation as well as ensure that they acquire this services on legal principles.

They should also ensure that the process of acquiring this support services operations is based on organisational policies and principles that have been established to ensure the support services meet organisational requirements and quality standards that are required within the organisation.8600-331 Understanding Support Services Operations in an organisation is, therefore, a suitable unit for most of the stakeholders of the organisation as it helps them to understand the principles of acquiring support services.

This unit is designed for the first-line managers, junior managers and team leaders within the organisation. These are leaders on the operational level of the organisation, and this unit helps to build their understanding of the principles of acquiring the support services that are required for their specific project teams. However, the unit can also be applied to stakeholders such as middle managers and top managers who make higher levels of decisions on tactical and strategic levels to ensure that they position the organisation in a way that it can access quality standard support services. The information can also be useful to individuals seeking to play roles in providing support services as well as employees within the organisation in preparing them for the engagement on related purposes.

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of the unit, the learners should be able to:

• Understand the range of support services required by their organisations

• Effective distinguish between hard and soft services for the context of their organisations

• Understand the legal impacts on the services as well as the principles guiding the acquisition of these services

• Describe the role of service level agreements, their typical structure and content

• Show understanding of how service level agreements are used by customers and suppliers within the organisation

• Describe the support services that are currently being provided by facilitates managed department and how they are delivered

• Explain the ways of providing support services that are designed to meet the requirements of the organisation

• Describe approaches and methods that can be used to measure and monitor the quality of support services

Key Learning Areas

8600-331 Understanding Support Services Operations in an organisation is a unit that is aimed at improving understanding of the support services operations. In achieving this learning goal, there are key learning areas, including quality management and legal implications, that must be covered. The main areas of focus within this unit include:

Range of Support Services and Legal Implications

This area of learning helps the learners to understand the different products and services that are required by their organisation. It helps them to differentiate between soft and hard services from the context of their organisation, ensuring that they can understand policies and procedures in the acquisition of support services. The area further builds an understanding of the trends in support service operations as well as relevant legislation that is applicable in the area of practice.

Service Level Agreements 

This area of learning helps to create awareness and understanding of service leave agreements. The learners must understand the typical structure and content of the service level agreements, and this area of the unit helps to cover these concepts as they are used by customers and suppliers. The area also helps to understand the interpretation of formal agreements with clients and the customer service procedures that follow these agreements.

They also must understand the authorisation procedures and other concepts, such as de-escalation, resolution and complaint handling that are associated with service-level agreements. Lastly, this area focuses on quality assurance procedures implemented to ensure that standard and legal regulations are upheld in the provision of support services.

Quality Management

This area of learning focuses on helping the learner to ensure that support services provided are aligned to organisation requirements. The organisation has policies that have been established, and support services should not compromise this requirement. As such, the area of learning helps the learners to provide services that, through the delivery options and quality, meet the specified principles and requirements. The area of learning also helps to build performance measurement and monitoring tools for support services within the organisation as well as ensure audits are conducted to determine the quality standards of the support services.

Evaluation

On completion of the unit, the learners are required to complete a written assessment that is based on a template with questions on the unit. The template covers both theoretical and practical skills that the learner needs to develop based on the concepts and principles learned within the unit.