Governance Gridlock at Meridian Insurance
Meridian Insurance runs five providers and an internal IT function. The end-to-end availability target is 99.9%, but no single person owns it. The monthly service governance board has 18 attendees, mostly provider account managers, and routinely defers decisions. Two KPIs conflict: the network provider is rewarded on cost per Mbit, while the application provider is rewarded on uptime. During a capacity incident each blamed the other; £400,000 in service credits was claimed, but customers saw a four-hour claims outage. The CIO chairs the board but delegates day-to-day integration to a SIAM coordinator with no budget or authority. Contract renewal is nine months away. The business is asking why SIAM has not improved service. All provider SLAs remain green. The COO wants a single dashboard.
1. Diagnose why the governance board is not improving end-to-end service.
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The board is a supplier review meeting, not a governance body. Eighteen attendees means no clear decision rights; account managers attend to protect their contracts, not to make cross-provider trade-offs. The absence of an end-to-end owner means availability is a shared hope rather than an accountable outcome. The two KPIs are locally rational and collectively harmful: the network provider is rewarded for cheap bandwidth and the application provider for uptime, so neither is rewarded for the capacity outcome the customer needs. Service credits have become an accounting ritual: £400,000 changed hands internally while the claims outage still happened. The SIAM coordinator has responsibility without authority or budget, so escalations die. The CIO's chairmanship does not fix this because the CIO delegates the actual integration work to someone who cannot decide. The business is absent, so customer impact is not in the room. Governance is failing on three tests: the right people with authority, the right decisions, and the right consequences.
2. Propose a governance structure with decision rights and escalation, and say what changes at the next contract renewal.
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Three-tier structure.
Tier 1: weekly operational integration meeting. Chaired by the SIAM lead, with empowered operational managers from all five providers. Decisions on major incidents, change conflicts and capacity actions; an action and decision log is published within 24 hours.
Tier 2: monthly service governance board. Chaired by the CIO, with business service owners and provider executives who can commit their firms. Agenda limited to end-to-end performance, risk, investment and unresolved escalations. Fewer attendees, but each with a mandate.
Tier 3: quarterly strategic board. COO, CFO and provider managing directors for contract, demand and investment decisions.
Roles and decision rights. Appoint end-to-end service owners for the top five business services, each mandated to set service levels and prioritise across providers. Give the SIAM lead a written escalation right to the CIO and a ring-fenced integration budget. Service owners decide service targets; the SIAM lead decides cross-provider process and escalations; providers decide within their domain; commercial changes go to the commercial owner.
At renewal. Replace provider-only SLAs with end-to-end service levels and contribution measures; add collaboration, data-sharing and joint capacity-planning obligations; convert service credits into a joint improvement fund or earn-back; require executive attendance with authority. The COO's single dashboard should show end-to-end service health and customer impact, not a grid of green provider SLAs.
3. The network provider and application provider blame each other for the capacity incident. How should service credits and accountability be handled?
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Do not use the credit claim as the primary response. It settles cost, not service, and it rewards both parties for producing evidence rather than fixing capacity. First, establish the end-to-end facts through a joint timeline and a shared capacity model: what demand was forecast, what was ordered, what was provisioned, and who knew what. It is likely both parties are partly right and the integration failed between them.
Accountability at two levels. Each provider remains accountable for its own contractual commitments, but the end-to-end service owner is accountable for the outcome. The service owner should present one explanation and one plan to the business, not two provider narratives.
Credits. Make a credit claim trigger a mandatory joint root-cause review and improvement plan. Consider pooling a portion of credits into a joint capacity reserve, so the money improves the service rather than funding a dispute. Publish the joint capacity plan with named owners and monthly review.
Renewal. Revise the incentives so neither provider is rewarded for optimising a local metric that harms the end-to-end service. Add a shared capacity objective and a collaboration measure. The test is whether the next capacity incident is resolved jointly, not whether one provider wins the credit argument.