Service Level Agreements: A Legal and Practical Guide

3: Building the Foundation for the SLA

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There should be some prioritisation of problems,

so that major catastrophic problems (e.g. the whole

IT network shutting down) have to be resolved

quickly and are differentiated from relatively

minor problems which the supplier can take longer

to fix (e.g. a computer screen that might flicker

occasionally).

It is also important to understand and document

what levels of service would seem to be very

good, acceptable, poor, and unacceptable, and then

try to link these into percentages relating to how

often the service level target has been met. For

example, if the service level target is met 99%+ of

the time, then this could be classed as ‘good’. 95%

to 99% could be classed as ‘acceptable’, 90% to