Service level agreement best practices

How to structure an SLA

To better understand the structure of your SLA, consider the following questions:

• What are the primary functions of the service level agreement (SLA)?
• What service level agreement (SLA) best practices are provided?
• Who is responsible for managing the SLA?
• Who provides the service level agreement (SLA)?
• Which service level agreement providers should I contact if I have any questions about service level agreement (SLA) implementation?

Data migration and disaster recovery

One of the most important functions of an SLA is to ensure that existing and future services are properly protected and managed. It is a good idea to draft and review your SLA periodically, as part of a regular process of service level improvement. Maintaining a strong relationship with third-party service providers is key to this purpose, as is ensuring that companies implement the right technology and practices at the right time.
To ensure a strong data continuity plan, it is crucial that service providers maintain a complete copy of all customer and service level information. This will allow them to make informed decisions about how to best fulfill their customers and minimize the chances of disputes arising. It is also a good idea to review SLAs that refer to specific services or parts of services. This ensures that no one is copying and pasting information from previous SLAs into their own systems.

Best practice #2: Establish a clear service level objective

A key objective of every SLA is clear: implement it with the specific service at hand in mind.
As a provider of IT services, there are bound to be times when this objective is ambiguous. It is especially important when using external suppliers to provide the services. A good SLA will outline the parameters for clear communication of service level objectives, so that any challenges can be resolved in advance.
To help ensure a well-organized SLA, a list of frequently asked questions (FAQ) should be included with every SLA, along with a detailed description of each service level objective. This helps clarify the terms in the contract, allows parties to agree on the actions taken in a certain amount of time, and ensures that SLAs can be reevaluated in light of recent events and data.
For example, if you are providing a cloud-based office suite, it is likely that the primary function of the suite needs you to provide administrative support. This provides a clear service level objective, which should be the start of the SLA. However, if you are providing end-to-end business collaboration software, you may need to tweak the SLA to reflect the fact that some functions may be moved to a different provider at a later date.

Best practice #3: Maintain a consistent SLA

As a provider of IT services, there will inevitably be a change in service levels. Your job is to make sure that the SLA you have in place for the services you provide for the end user is up to date. This means that no matter what the service level objective becomes, you should maintain a consistent SLA across service levels from service-level objective to service-level objective.
For example, if you are providing support for a business application, it is likely that you will be providing support for a while. This will provide time for your existing customer base to grow, which will in turn increase the demand for new customers. As a result of this, you should probably establish a minimum support level for each service level, with a clear explanation of the service level objective and parameters, and a target percentage of the total amount of support requests that you can support per year.

Best practice #4: Establish clear reporting metrics

As a provider of IT services, you will likely have access to a massive amount of customer and supply data, which will likely contain a ton of SLA numbers. You should design your SLAs to make it extremely difficult for your rivals to steal your trade secrets or game the system. To avoid any doubt, you should design SLAs with clear reporting metrics