What Does An IT Service Delivery Manager Do?

WHAT DOES AN IT SERVICE DELIVERY MANAGER DO?

Published: Sep 26, 2025 - The IT Service Delivery Manager ensures seamless communication and collaboration across business stakeholders, technology teams, and partners to drive transparency, timely decision-making, and operational excellence. This role involves overseeing incident management, service delivery, and release dependencies while using data-driven insights to track performance, identify process improvements, and align projects with company priorities. The Manager also fosters strong vendor partnerships, manages project timelines and risks, and establishes consistent processes to deliver high-quality technology services and outcomes.

A Review of Professional Skills and Functions for IT Service Delivery Manager

1. IT Service Delivery Manager Roles and Responsibilities

Staffing: Determine staffing requirements for the service delivery team.
Recruitment: Recruit and interview service delivery staff and make hiring decisions with the Regional VP.
Employee Development: Develop employees with appropriate skills, promote teamwork, and foster open and effective communications.
Performance Management: Monitor staff performance, including performance reviews.
Goal Setting: Set service delivery staff goals and objectives.
Team Management: Manage the service delivery team’s daily activities to ensure achievement of delivery SLAs and SLOs.
Operations Oversight: Oversee daily management of all service calls, including schedules, escalations, and client satisfaction.
Client Onboarding: Execute successful client onboarding and other client projects.
Budget Management: Manage expenses such as headcount expenses, service delivery scope, and change control to meet the budget.
Timesheet Approval: Approve and verify timesheet accuracy weekly.
Billing Oversight: Monitor and track billing and invoicing accurately.

2. IT Service Delivery Manager Duties and Roles

Strategic Leadership: Lead strategic planning, organizational design, and IT transformation efforts in highly complex environments.
Mission Alignment: Define and communicate the mission and vision for Infrastructure Services to align with business objectives.
Service Portfolio: Shape the service portfolio and governance framework to optimize resource allocation and prioritization.
Business Translation: Translate business requirements into cost-effective IT services while maintaining agility to adapt to shifting priorities.
Technology Evaluation: Evaluate internal and external technology capabilities to strengthen the organization’s competitive position.
IT Oversight: Provide strategic oversight for IT systems across their lifecycle, including architecture, engineering, operations, and service support.
Transition Planning: Develop action plans to ensure seamless transitions for IT operations supporting applications and databases.
Migration Strategy: Design and execute migration strategies to shift from legacy infrastructure to cloud environments.
Risk Management: Proactively identify and resolve gaps, inefficiencies, and bottlenecks that could drive unnecessary cost or risk.
Requirements Analysis: Analyze and document operational requirements to support successful technology transitions.
Process Improvement: Leverage knowledge of current processes and systems to guide and improve future operations.

3. IT Service Delivery Manager Responsibilities and Key Tasks

Team Management: Manage the IT service delivery team, including service desk, desktop, and application support.
Performance Monitoring: Responsible for ensuring all service delivery KPIs are met or exceeded.
Strategy Delivery: Deliver and improve on the roadmap and strategy that the business has in place.
Change Leadership: Lead the team through cultural and technical changes that are part of the journey.
Training Support: Provide training and support to team members within the broader organisation.
Vendor Relations: Maintain strong relationships with relevant key external vendors and internal stakeholders.
Client Reviews: Lead regular reviews with clients to ensure delivery commitments and contractual obligations are met.
Status Reporting: Compose, deliver, and track client status reports and delivery scorecards.
Problem Solving: Perform on-the-fly problem-solving with the ability to context switch rapidly.
Process Development: Develop processes, best practices, standards, and data compliance frameworks.

4. IT Service Delivery Manager Roles and Details

Procurement Management: Manage procurement and purchasing of hardware, software, and licensing as required and agreed by the client.
Escalation Resolution: Own and resolve support escalation issues from the Service Desk and Support Team.
Service Level Alignment: Ensure service levels are clear, agreed, comprehensive, and aligned with end customer contractual SLAs.
Service Compliance: Ensure agreed service levels are met with internal customers.
Service Reporting: Provide a full suite of service reporting to key internal customer stakeholders.
Performance Tracking: Track, ensure accuracy, and report trended performance against agreed service levels.
Improvement Tracking: Track and report progress of service improvement plans, major issue resolutions, and root cause analysis.
Issue Escalation: Act as a point of escalation for projects, business-as-usual tickets, and major issues.
Service Excellence: Champion the delivery of excellent service to customers.
Process Integration: Work with squads to ensure support processes are robust and integrated across teams.

5. IT Service Delivery Manager Key Accountabilities

SLA Management: Be accountable for the maintenance of agreed service level agreements (SLAs).
Process Improvement: Develop and implement action plans to address deficiencies in the support process.
Escalation Management: Act as the primary service escalation contact for the customer, ensuring that issues are owned and resolved to the customer’s satisfaction, including coverage outside business hours.
Incident Reporting: Prepare incident reports (IR) and root cause analysis (RCA) reports, liaise with customers, and ensure corrective actions are implemented by the agreed-upon due dates.
Ticket Review: Review aged tickets and ensure measures are in place to address and meet defined KPIs.
Customer Advisory: Act as the trusted advisor to customers and partners, driving issues or requests to closure and ensuring the highest level of customer satisfaction.
Follow-Up Management: Proactively follow up with internal teams to address service delivery or support matters that do not meet customer expectations.
Service Governance: Conduct service governance and reporting, including regular service review meetings with key customers and partners.
Project Support: Support the delivery of internal or external projects as directed by the manager.
Team Leadership: Lead and mentor the Philippines customer service team.

6. IT Service Delivery Manager General Responsibilities

ICT Procurement: Be responsible for ICT procurement, including hardware, software, outsourced services, and professional services within the organization as an ICT Procurement Specialist.
Team Collaboration: Work as part of a procurement team and report directly to the Procurement Coordinator.
Procurement Administration: Administer the procurement process from establishing operational needs to negotiating and awarding contracts to suppliers in both public and non-public procurement contexts.
Customer Support: Assist internal customers with procurement processes and help determine the most appropriate procurement strategy for their requirements.
Supplier Management: Manage supplier relationships to ensure contracts consistently meet company needs, including quality standards, delivery schedules, and general terms and conditions.
Market Monitoring: Monitor the market to enhance supplier referencing.
Spend Analysis: Analyze spending within the procurement portfolio and provide recommendations for cost savings.
Change Management: Engage in projects and change management of application and integration CIs throughout the service lifecycle, service value chain, and service value system, adhering to ITIL v4 principles.
Contract Compliance: Ensure that key partners uphold and deliver their contractual agreements.
Issue Escalation: Act as the escalation point for any service issues.

7. IT Service Delivery Manager Role Purpose

Project Delivery: Manage IT project delivery across EMEA business units, including impacted applications and infrastructure components.
Scope Management: Oversee project scope by defining deliverables, managing execution, analyzing requirements and impacts, validating outcomes, and providing comprehensive reporting with full budget and cost management.
Budget Management: Manage budget and staffing forecasts, tracking, and reporting, and produce clear dashboard reporting, including program-level updates on overall deliverables, interdependencies, and critical path analysis.
Executive Reporting: Own reporting responsibilities to EMEA executives, including frequent ad hoc, short-notice, and tailored reporting.
Global Collaboration: Collaborate with global Project Management Offices and teams to build consensus on project plans, status, and risk tracking.
Performance Understanding: Develop a thorough understanding of service performance targets and measurements.
Measurement Leadership: Lead discussions on how service measurements will be applied.
SLA Alignment: Understand the underlying business drivers for SLAs to ensure that measurements correctly target and incentivize the right services and behaviors.
Team Communication: Ensure clear, open communication with support teams and maintain alignment on service management matters.
Process Assurance: Ensure robust processes, documentation, training, and support are in place to achieve service levels.

8. IT Service Delivery Manager Essential Functions

End-User Computing: Manage and oversee software distribution, patch management, image management, endpoint protection, and other end-user computing technologies together with the Regional IT Support, Server Computing, and Security teams.
Troubleshooting Leadership: Lead and oversee the troubleshooting of SCCM server and client solutions across both infrastructure and application layers.
Solution Partnership: Partner with other business units to identify, rectify, recommend, and implement solutions related to SCCM and other deployment technologies.
Security Compliance: Ensure operational compliance with all security policies and procedures by enforcing security measures, monitoring, and reporting for end-user technologies and applications, with the objectives of 100% asset supervision and 100% security.
Operational Procedures: Ensure all operational procedures and processes are implemented, maintained, and managed to meet service requirements.
Ad-Hoc Tasks: Perform other relevant ad-hoc tasks as assigned by the Reporting Manager or in response to business demands.
Process Improvement: Recommend and lead new processes to improve quality or on-time delivery.
Knowledge Sharing: Encourage knowledge sharing and consistency across teams to support long-term service improvement.
Culture Building: Promote a culture of accountability, continuous learning, and customer focus.

9. IT Service Delivery Manager Additional Details

Operations Management: Take responsibility for the day-to-day operation of Support Analysts, LAN, WAN, and voice technologies, providing guidance and supervision.
Network Maintenance: Maintain all network-related hardware and software, including upgrades from both technical and user perspectives, in collaboration with field support.
Monitoring Response: Monitor demand and respond in a timely manner to network and server anomalies and outages.
Maintenance Oversight: Manage maintenance routines, obsolescence, contracts, and service providers.
SLA Compliance: Meet SLA requirements on service provision and restoration.
Capacity Management: Capacity manage assets across the estate using the monitoring platform.
Escalation Contact: Act as the escalation contact for service issues outside of hours.
Technical Collaboration: Collaborate with users, vendors, and technical staff as a technical stakeholder in related service providers, including voice and communication platforms, to resolve priority incidents and deliver service-enhancing improvements.
Team Leadership: Manage a functional team (Business and Technical professionals).
Service Improvement: Support continuous improvement across global support teams to enhance service quality.

10. IT Service Delivery Manager Roles

Service Accountability: Deliver contractual service obligations with precision and accountability.
Customer Engagement: Lead customer meetings and facilitate strategy sessions to align expectations and drive outcomes.
Process Analysis: Analyze business processes and provide clear recommendations for improvements and opportunities.
Best Practices: Define best practices in delivery by developing templates, structured work plans, and standardized methodologies.
Service Leadership: Provide leadership in service delivery to ensure consistent execution across engagements.
Team Inspiration: Inspire and guide the team to achieve high levels of customer satisfaction through continuous improvement.
Operations Oversight: Oversee service delivery operations to confirm systems and procedures are implemented effectively.
Performance Tracking: Track performance against service level agreements to maintain strong customer relationships.
Team Management: Manage technical teams to align delivery with client requirements and project goals.
Agreement Negotiation: Negotiate new service agreements to ensure business needs are supported by measurable outcomes.
Documentation Management: Develop and update service documentation to keep operational areas and stakeholders informed.

11. IT Service Delivery Manager Tasks

Team Management: Manage, guide, and train support team staff to ensure service delivery adheres to company standards, policies, and procedures.
Escalation Support: Serve as an escalation and guidance point for the support team by providing advice, training, and career progression to all technical staff.
Team Engagement: Hold team meetings, one-on-ones, and engage with the management team and contractor networks.
Customer Expectations: Ensure customer expectations of support team services are consistently met.
Innovation: Think outside the box and introduce new technology to improve service delivery and enhance customer support.
Customer Satisfaction: Maintain and improve the current +96% CSAT rating.
Work Delegation: Delegate and triage work to appropriate support and field services personnel, supervising, guiding, and resourcing to ensure task completion within appropriate timeframes.
Crisis Management: Manage technical crises with an emphasis on leadership, calmness, and a well-thought-through approach to crisis resolution.
Service Catalogue: Maintain a service catalogue that includes offerings, costs, and renewal dates for all providers and partners.
Budget Alignment: Ensure all services in the catalogue are budgeted and aligned with organisational strategy.

12. IT Service Delivery Manager Details and Accountabilities

Operations Management: Manage all operational activities by engaging with outsourced service bundles and internal functional teams (Application, Infrastructure, Security, Governance, Business, and customers).
Process Standardization: Harmonize processes and standardize ways of working across the Application Service portfolio.
Process Improvement: Implement continuous process improvement to deliver better service and reduce operational costs by enhancing existing processes or defining new ones in line with the IM strategy.
Performance Reporting: Present dashboards with key indicators on availability and performance targets, as defined in the SLA with the Business.
Project Participation: Participate in projects and validate application readiness.
L1 Support: Provide L1 support and resolve product issues and tickets through collaboration.
Service Alignment: Ensure all services are aligned with the client’s ISOM (first priority) and ITIL v3 (second priority).
Framework Delivery: Deliver all services within a Product Service Line framework.
Customer Engagement: Work onsite with customers to drive value out of engagements.
Executive Interaction: Engage with customers at an executive level.
Staff Coaching: Manage and coach staff to deliver a high standard of customer service for clients.

13. IT Service Delivery Manager Overview

Backlog Management: Build, continuously adjust, and maintain the backlog with identified improvements and optimizations.
Release Deployment: Deploy new application releases such as Planon.
Implementation Support: Prepare testing, implementation, and go-live of functionalities.
Requirement Management: Manage operational and non-functional requirements such as availability, capacity, performance, continuity, and their implementation.
Incident Resolution: Solve the cause of incidents, including 24/7, by providing workarounds and permanent solutions with the team or partners.
Compliance Assurance: Ensure systems meet data privacy requirements, information security requirements, audit compliance and control requirements, and license requirements.
Standby Services: Join 24/7 standby services several times a year with consignment fee coverage.
Cost Management: Manage system costs across the entire lifecycle and ensure the correct ratio between added value and costs.
Stakeholder Management: Switch continuously between the business and the department managing the application, convincing stakeholders to prioritize the most important requirements when configuring the application.
IT Support Ownership: Ensure clients receive a consistently high level of IT support services and take ownership of day-to-day operational IT needs.

14. IT Service Delivery Manager Job Description

SOW Development: Support the development of Statements of Work (SOWs) and Software Quality Solutions in collaboration with the Principal Consultant to meet client engagement needs for new and existing clients.
Customer Management: Manage multiple customers and teams while supporting individuals in complex delivery environments.
QA Delivery: Drive the delivery of Quality Assurance solutions across multiple projects.
Team Culture: Promote culture, values, and inspire teams.
Contract Negotiation: Negotiate terms and contracts with clients.
Client Escalation: Act as the primary escalation point for clients and resolve critical situations through effective communication with clients and internal project teams.
Contract Compliance: Ensure that scope, cost, schedule, and resources meet contractual deliverables.
Team Formation: Form and norm software delivery teams, taking responsibility for onboarding, offboarding, and rotations.
Team Coaching: Coach teams on practice, communication, and culture, while identifying opportunities for personal growth among team members.
Strategy Contribution: Contribute to the ideation and execution of delivery strategy and initiatives.

15. IT Service Delivery Manager Functions

Client Advocacy: Be the primary contact and act as the voice of OST’s clients, managing discussions around business challenges and collaborating with Principal Consultants and Practices to define and deliver optimal solutions.
Executive Relationships: Build executive-level relationships within client organizations and serve as a trusted business advisor.
Account Planning: Maintain the client account plan and roadmap throughout the tenure of the relationship.
Opportunity Development: Explore new opportunities for clients proactively, focusing on present needs while planning for the future.
Business Development: Collaborate with sales and internal teams on new business development by providing organizational insight, problem framing, high-level approaches, cost estimates, and Statements of Work (SOWs).
Proactive Engagement: Engage proactively with clients and account teams, quickly identifying and responding to issues, building communication plans, and driving positive resolutions.
Risk Mitigation: Mitigate risks and issues while managing client expectations, acting as the client’s primary escalation point and trusted confidant.
Resource Management: Provide resourcing input across functions, including scaling teams up or down and sharing resources with other teams to meet demand.
Onboarding Management: Maintain a client team onboarding approach that ensures a consistent experience and enables new contributors to feel welcome, well-informed, and productive on day one.
Value Evangelism: Evangelize the value of OST both internally and externally.
Discipline Leadership: Lead the evolution of the Engagement Management discipline within OST.

16. IT Service Delivery Manager Accountabilities

Stakeholder Communication: Establish and facilitate optimal levels of communication between all stakeholders, including marketing, technology support, training, project management, and core business areas, to ensure timely decision-making and transparency.
Partner Engagement: Engage with technology partners to facilitate and cultivate strong partnerships that produce quality experiences.
Process Alignment: Work with partner project management and production engineering teams to ensure timely alignment and execution of incident management, service and operational tasks, and milestones, while reviewing activity and identifying areas of process improvement.
Data Tracking: Use data to track key project performance indicators, identify trends, and ensure that projects and programs align with company priorities.
Dependency Management: Oversee release dependencies and manage plans to achieve them.
Timeline Management: Communicate with internal single points of contact and the IT HelpDesk regarding project timeline and dependency changes while tracking progress, providing transparency, reviewing tasks, and acting as the accountable party for milestones, timelines, and outcomes.
Status Reporting: Conduct periodic status meetings with internal stakeholders and leadership.
Issue Communication: Communicate project and work status, issues, and risks to appropriate stakeholders while reviewing project activity and recommending improvements.
Task Ownership: Establish clear ownership for project tasks and ensure stakeholders have the tools they need.
Process Consistency: Work with the program manager within the Advisor Technology Solutions team to establish consistent processes and policies and track all service, operational, and project tasks within the platform.

17. IT Service Delivery Manager Job Summary

Global Accountability: Be globally accountable for the support of environments in scope, ensuring escalations are strictly justified.
Provider Management: Manage relationships with external providers responsible for IT operations and their deliveries, ensuring SLA compliance, alignment with standards, seamless integration with internal operations and BCP/DRP, and continuous improvement.
SOW Oversight: Oversee the implementation of SOWs and define roles and responsibilities across internal teams and suppliers.
Service Monitoring: Monitor, report, analyze, and escalate on service alignment, including service levels, against agreed SOWs.
Capacity Alignment: Align service-delivery capacity with business demands while maintaining customer satisfaction.
Incident Management: Deliver a consistent process for incident and problem escalation and resolution in line with the governance framework.
Change Coordination: Work with Business Relationship Managers (BRMs) to ensure IT changes are coordinated without disrupting business processes.
Service Improvement: Collaborate with teams to develop problem management and service improvement plans.
Cross-Team Collaboration: Build strong relationships with IT Security, Build, and Solution Center teams to ensure high-quality support and agility in response to changing priorities.
Quality Control: Control service provider quality, identify gaps, and propose solutions.
Performance Monitoring: Continuously monitor and report on availability and performance metrics of production applications and infrastructure.
Compliance Coordination: Coordinate team actions to improve compliance for new or existing systems.

18. IT Service Delivery Manager Responsibilities

Release Coordination: Coordinate the release of application, database, and system changes.
Issue Resolution: Collaborate within IT Operations Management to facilitate effective issue resolution across multiple suppliers.
Operational Monitoring: Monitor, report, analyze, and escalate on the day-to-day operational execution of SOWs.
Workflow Documentation: Document workflows and touchpoints between various service providers in OLAs.
Risk Mitigation: Support the setup and maintenance of a risk-mitigation plan, including improvement, prevention, and repair activities.
Incident Management: Implement a consistent process for incident and problem escalation and resolution under the governance framework.
Provider Evaluation: Continuously evaluate service provider performance against OLAs and communicate results to stakeholders.
System Documentation: Ensure up-to-date system installation and configuration documentation, including security roles and permissions.
Service Culture: Foster a business-oriented culture and mindset driven by continual service improvement.
Incident Backup: Act as backup major incident manager.
Technology Awareness: Maintain awareness of new technologies and service management practices, providing direction on emerging IT operations methods for integration.
Transition Management: Manage IT operations transitions from out-tasking to outsourcing.

19. IT Service Delivery Manager Details

Team Leadership: Lead a team of geographically dispersed resources to deliver technology projects on time and within budget for the assigned domain and geography.
Delivery Accountability: Maintain end-to-end accountability for customer satisfaction and overall delivery excellence within the specific service line or CBS function and geographic responsibilities.
Project Planning: Work with teams to determine necessary activities to successfully deliver projects within the service line or function.
Resource Coordination: Ensure the right type and number of resources are in place to fulfill planned projects by cooperating with Resource Planners.
Customer Satisfaction: Deliver customer satisfaction and overall excellence by identifying opportunities or issues and driving speedy resolution.
Demand Management: Understand the pipeline of demand and collaborate with Resource Planners to ensure an appropriate supply of resources.
Financial Management: Manage financial reporting and optimize processes to achieve cost-effective delivery.
Goal Contribution: Contribute to the wider goals of IT Services.
Priority Management: Balance multiple and conflicting priorities with transparency to the Digital Experience SDL and DFF Product Board.
Stakeholder Management: Manage and lead complex stakeholders toward optimal solutions while helping them understand resource constraints and prioritization.

20. IT Service Delivery Manager Duties

Project Discipline: Hold teams to the highest standards of project discipline and accountability.
Delivery Strategy: Continuously improve the technical delivery model and strategy, implementing and managing delivery with associated teams to achieve strategic objectives.
Matrix Management: Work effectively within a matrix organization by balancing customer needs with firm initiatives and goals.
Offering Identification: Identify appropriate product and service offerings to meet client needs.
Decision Making: Make critical decisions, including prioritizing relationships to develop, negotiating with customers, and overcoming obstacles.
Team Management: Manage multiple teams to deliver projects aligned with customer needs while ensuring transparency to IT Services and customer stakeholders.
Issue Resolution: Identify, manage, and resolve complex issues while preventing escalations on demand.
Risk Management: Manage, negotiate, and resolve project risks effectively.
SPC Competency: Demonstrate in-depth knowledge of SPC competency principles and practices through coaching, learning, and mentoring.
Leadership Example: Act as both a leader and team player, setting an example for project managers, business analysts, and other team members.
Team Culture: Create an open, honest, accountable, and collaborative team environment.

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