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Acquisition
Acquisition: Outsourcing topics: Service levels: A template for SLAs

A template for SLAs

The following is intended only as a guide, to ensure that you have thoiught about the contents of your SLAs. It is not comprehensive, so you must still add in clauses that cover your own circumstances. It is not mandatory, so that some of the clauses listed below can be omitted, again to cover your own circumstances.

The parties

The parties to the main contract will be the provider and the customer. The parties to a SLA should be the provider and the user of the services. The user may be the customer or it may be a single department. Some SLAs have full lists of all the users attached to them. However short or comprehensive the list of users may be, the SLA should be between the provider of the service and the user of it.

The outsourcer

Description of the outsourcer, including location, contact telephone and telefax numbers, email addresses, and contact names.

The end user

Description of the end users, including names, titles, locations, contact numbers and addresses.

Agreement

The agreement itself is based upon a number of items that the customer and the provider mutually accept.

Services

Agreement on the "Services specification", below.

Staff competence

Agreement by the outsourcer and the customer that staff will be competent.

Changes

Agreement on the "Service change procedures", below.

Contingency planning

Agreement on the "Contingency planning procedures", below.

Termination

Agreement on conditions under which the agreement may be terminated.

Services specification

There will be a general statement of the business need and the reasons for the SLA. Next, there will be a description of each Service to be provided, including its end users, its performance criteria (Service Levels) and its performance measures. There may be a set of descriptions, where these apply to a single SLA and are not included in the main contract.

Business need

General statement of the business need and the reasons for outsourcing.

Statement of the Services to be provided

Description of each Service to be provided, including its end users, its performance criteria (Service Levels) and its performance measures

Resources

Description of the resources that the outsourcer will apply to the Services.

Security

Description of the security methods to be used to protect the customer's applications and data.

Support

Description of the support normally available to the customer, including service Levels and performance criteria.

Limitations

Description of limitations upon the provision of the Services, such as hours of operation, including, where appropriate, Service Levels.

Reporting

Description of the standard reporting process, including details of the statistics on Service Levels and performance measures to be provided and the frequency of reporting.

Description of the processes by which the outsourcer or the customer, at the other's request, will make information available.

Description of the processes by which the customer will monitor reporting on statistics and performance measures from the outsourcer to determine the Service Levels and by which the customer will report to the outsourcer of the adequacy of those Service Levels.

Training

Description of the training available to the customer, including training included in the Services and training which is otherwise available.

Performance measurement

Description of the methods by which customer satisfaction will be measured, including, where appropriate, Service Levels and performance measures.

Service change procedures

The processes by which changes will be requested will be described, including ad hoc changes requested by the supplier, ad hoc changes requested by the customer, and planned changes due to expected expansion.

Changes requested by the outsourcer

Description of the process by which the outsourcer will request changes.

Changes requested by the customer

Description of the process by which the customer will request changes.

Expected expansion

Description of the processes and methods to be used by the outsourcer and the customer to allow for expected expansion of the Services, including, where necessary, any changes to the Service Levels.

Contingency planning procedures

The contingency planning section will cover planned unavailability, failure and fault correction, and escalation procedures.

Outages

Description of the process to be used and its Service Levels in informing the customer of planned outages.

Failure correction

Description of the process to be used for service faults and failures, including the methods for keeping the customer informed for the situation and progress towards a resolution.

Escalation

Description of the escalation procedures to be used by the outsourcer to correct faults and failures, including contact points, methods of reporting faults, information required about faults, their priorities and their potential impacts.


The opinions expressed are solely those of David Blakey.
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