How To Prepare A Great Service Level Agreement (SLA)
Service level agreement (SLA) is more straightforward an agreement of terms made by a service provider and the receiver(s). The agreement could be between parties within the same institution(internal) or between parties from different organisations. A service level agreement is all the terms that are agreed on, including the work quality, assurance and commitment, but it doesn’t specify how the work is done. As the deal is the backbone of any type of business transactions, you should be very careful about preparing an SLA, and here we have everything you need to know about it.
Types of SLA: What Are The Three Types Of SLA
Before knowing about what to include in the service level agreement, it is better we start with the types of SLA.
- Service Level SLA
It is the SLA made by a service provider to all of its customers at once. For example, an ISP providing internet services to the general public. - Customer Level SLA
A customer level SLA is an agreement made by the service provider to a specific customer or a group of customers. Businesses giving an extra discount to regular consumers can be taken as an example of it. - Multilevel SLA
It combines elements of both, service level SLA and customer level SLA. It also applies to the corporate level and takes out all the vagueness that could be prevalent in the previous two types of SLA.
What To Include in a Service Level Agreement (SLA)
The idea is to have as much as work description available in the agreement. For example, even if being deemed as very a reliable IT outsourcing company in Singapore, some of our clients were not able to get our best services, just because the terms were not clear. So, to avoid such a situation, we recommend everyone looking for our services to have these things included in the contract.
- Service Type
This isn’t only about telling the name of the service; you will need to have a brief description about all of it. The party receiving the services should be completely clear with its concept and what they are getting, and it should fulfil all of their enquiries. - Expected Performance Level and Responsiveness
Both the provider and receiver should be realistic about the promises and results. This is not a place to ‘hope for’ goals, this is where you define them in a definite manner. Also, the response time should be set as the need of the customer. - Monitoring Process
This is where the receiver makes a proposal, and the service provider accepts it. Here, the receiver specifies how they are going to supervise the work, and how frequently will they do it. - Issues Reporting
The steps to report the issue’s in work is an integral part of a complete Service Level Agreement (SLA). Here, you define the process of how the customers can approach the provider with the problems in work. - Issue Resolving Time Frame
In case an issue is reported, it should be resolved under the time limit which has been defined in this part of the SLA. It should be defined in the convenience of both, the customer and the giver. - Repercussions
Here, you include the consequences if the service provider is not able to produce what they promised on the other parts of SLA.
