There are two ways in which change can occur.

First, there may be planned changes that the customer and provider have agreed to implement under certain circumstances.

Second, the customer may want changes to the Services to reflect its new or changing business needs. Alternatively, the provider may want changes to the Services to reflect changes within its own business.

Planned changes

There are several events that can be anticipated. Examples of these are:

1. The volume of work handled by the outsourcer on behalf of the customer may increase. This will be caused by the customer's business growing, with a resultant growth in the number of staff, in the size of the customer's market, in the volume of business within that market, in the amount of product being manufactured, housed and distributed, and in the assets required to manufacture, house and distribute the product. As a result, the outsourcer may, in some circumstances, have increased costs associated with greater volumes, or may, in other circumstances, have decreased costs associated with economies of scale. Both of these possibilities must be considered, so that planning provides a full picture of the costs of the customer's expansion over time.
2. In some cases, the outsourcer may have moved into a new area of business on behalf of the customer, and this may have caused the costs to be higher than those of an outsourcer that was already established in those areas of business. As a result of doing business with that customer in those areas of business, more customers may be attracted to use the outsourcer's services. In these circumstances, the agreement between the outsourcer and the original customer may include a means of reducing the costs to that customer.
3. The outsourcing contract will eventually terminate. There should be a clear procedure for the customer and the outsourcer to "disengage".
4. It is in the nature of things that a business is likely to plan for growth rather than shrinkage. Nevertheless, the customer may require less in future than it does now, for a number of reasons. In these circumstances there should be agreement on how the customer and the outsourcer will work together to ensure that the customer will not pay an uneconomic price and that the outsourcer will not have made an investment that will not be realized. Although this may not be an area that either party will wish to explore, it is useful to establish the rules and parameters that will govern re-negotiation in the event of shrinkage.

Unplanned changes

Most unplanned changes that will affect an outsourcing contract and its associated SLAs are likely to be initiated by the customer rather than the outsourcer.

One change that may not be anticipated is the acquisition of the customer by new owners. In this case, the new owners may wish to include the customer's outsourced services in some other arrangement. This will result in an unplanned termination of the outsourcing contract.

Although it may not be possible to plan in advance what the commitments of the customer and the outsourcer should be in the event of an unplanned termination, it should still be possible to agree some guidelines for the approach to be taken.

Finally, it should be pointed out that many of the agreements to deal with change will apply to the whole outsourcing contract. It may be, therefore, that these agreements should be included in the overall contract rather than in individual service level agreements.