SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENTS

One of the things that has come up recently in conversation with potential clients is service level agreements or SLAs. Not everyone is familiar with that term, so I’ll give you a quick definition from Wikipedia.

SLA Definition

A service-level agreement (SLA) is a commitment between a service provider and a client. Particular aspects of the service – quality, availability, responsibilities – are agreed between the service provider and the service user. The most common component of an SLA is that the services should be provided to the customer as agreed upon in the contract. As an example, Internet service providers and telcos will commonly include service level agreements within the terms of their contracts with customers to define the level(s) of service being sold in plain language terms.

Applications to IT Services

So why has this been coming up in discussion with potential clients? Well, it’s because i.t.NOW has an SLA on its services. That’s right. We guarantee our clients that we will respond to their issues within a certain amount of time based on the severity and the impact of the issue.

Most of our competition doesn’t do anything of the sort. In fact, most IT providers and even managed services providers (which is supposed to indicate a higher level of service) don’t even track their response times.

How could they possibly offer you a service guarantee on something they don’t even track? The short answer is that they can’t.

One of the things that has come up recently in conversation with potential clients is service level agreements or SLAs. Not everyone is familiar with that term, so I’ll give you a quick definition from Wikipedia.

SLA Definition

A service-level agreement (SLA) is a commitment between a service provider and a client. Particular aspects of the service – quality, availability, responsibilities – are agreed between the service provider and the service user. The most common component of an SLA is that the services should be provided to the customer as agreed upon in the contract. As an example, Internet service providers and telcos will commonly include service level agreements within the terms of their contracts with customers to define the level(s) of service being sold in plain language terms.

Applications to IT Services

So why has this been coming up in discussion with potential clients? Well, it’s because i.t.NOW has an SLA on its services. That’s right. We guarantee our clients that we will respond to their issues within a certain amount of time based on the severity and the impact of the issue.

Most of our competition doesn’t do anything of the sort. In fact, most IT providers and even managed services providers (which is supposed to indicate a higher level of service) don’t even track their response times.

How could they possibly offer you a service guarantee on something they don’t even track? The short answer is that they can’t.

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