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.
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