Contract and Supplier Management Guidance
Service Level Agreement
- A negotiated agreement between a provider and the recipient, generally for a service provision.
- Clarifies the services, expectations and responsibilities.
- Defines required service elements:
- Service availability
- Standards
- Duties
- Complaints/escalation procedure
- Defines management elements:
- How performance will be measured and reported
- Dispute resolution
- Revision process
- Financial credit or penalty
- Accept/rejection
- Termination
- Objective of the Agreement
- Future reviews and amendments to this Service Level Agreement
- Objectives of the Service
- Service Users
- Responsibilities - who we are, what we do
- Service Availability
- Description of key services
- Service Levels/Standards (Describe how you will measure, monitor and evaluate service performance - quantitatively and qualitatively.)
- Monitoring success (Report on performance - what will be your key performance indicators/outcomes or impacts)
- Complaints (Describe how complaints or conflicts will be dealt with and resolved.)
- Date of Agreement (insert date)
- Signatories to Agreement
Figure 1: Distinguish between KPIs and SLAs
| KPI | SLA |
| Drive behaviour | Drive behaviour |
| Drive continuous improvement | Achieve performance targets |
| Track success, view trends | Trigger articulated consequence |
| Describe DESIRABLE outcome | Describe GUARANTEED performance |
Outline Service Level Agreement Contents
Once an SLA is in place, it should be periodically reviewed to ensure the requirements continue to meet user needs.
