When a supplier modifies the contract they offer to your organization, this represents a change that can affect services, service components, costs, risks, and agreed service levels.
In ITIL 4, the purpose of the change enablement practice is to maximize the number of successful service and product changes by ensuring that risks are properly assessed, authorizing changes to proceed, and managing the change schedule. This includes changes that arise from external parties such as suppliers, not just technical changes inside IT.
A contract modification by a supplier can:
alter delivery terms or service performance
introduce new risks (financial, operational, compliance)
require changes to service design, support, or architecture
Because of this, it should go through change enablement, where:
the risk to services is assessed
the impact on existing services and customers is evaluated
a decision is made whether to approve, reject, or modify the proposed change
coordination with other practices (like supplier management and service level management) may occur, but the formal risk assessment and authorization of the change are part of change enablement.
Why the other options are less appropriate:
A. Incident management
Focuses on restoring normal service operation as quickly as possible after an unplanned interruption or reduction in quality.
It reacts to incidents; it does not manage contractual changes or assess risks from supplier contract modifications.
B. Service level management
Ensures SLAs and service targets are defined, agreed, and monitored with customers.
While it may be involved in understanding how a supplier change affects SLAs, it is not the primary practice responsible for overall risk assessment and authorization of such changes.
C. Service request management
Deals with predefined, user-initiated requests, such as password resets or standard access requests.
It is operational and transactional and not concerned with supplier contract changes or service risk assessment.
D. Change enablement
Specifically designed to assess, authorize, and manage changes to services and service components, including those triggered by changes in supplier contracts.
Therefore, it is the MOST appropriate practice for assessing the risk to services in this scenario.
So, the practice that would be most involved in assessing the risk to services when a supplier modifies their contract is D. Change enablement.
AXELOS – ITIL Foundation: ITIL 4 Edition, Change Enablement practice purpose and description
AXELOS – ITIL 4 Practice Guides (Change Enablement, Service Level Management, Incident Management, Service Request Management)