What is a Service Level Agreement (SLA)?
Definition
SLA stands for Service Level Agreement. It is a contractual agreement between a service provider and a customer that outlines the specific level of service the provider will deliver. SLAs are commonly used in various industries, including technology, telecommunications, and customer support, to define the quality and performance standards expected from the service provider.
An SLA typically includes several key components, such as:
1. Service Description: This section specifies the details of the service being provided, including its scope, features, and any limitations or exclusions.
2. Service Level Objectives (SLOs): SLOs define measurable targets or performance indicators that the service provider commits to achieving. These can include metrics like uptime, response time, resolution time, or any other relevant parameters.
3. Performance Metrics: This section outlines the specific metrics used to measure the service provider's performance. It may include metrics like availability, reliability, mean time between failures (MTBF), mean time to repair (MTTR), and others.
4. Responsibilities and Roles: The SLA clarifies the roles and responsibilities of both the service provider and the customer. It outlines what each party is expected to contribute and what actions they should take in case of issues or breaches.
5. Escalation Procedures: This part describes the steps and processes to be followed when issues arise, including how and when to escalate problems to higher levels of management or support.
6. Remedies and Penalties: SLAs may include provisions for remedies or penalties in the event of service level breaches. These can include financial compensation, service credits, or other forms of restitution.
SLAs help establish a clear understanding between the service provider and the customer, ensuring that both parties have mutually agreed-upon expectations. They serve as a foundation for maintaining service quality, resolving disputes, and providing a basis for continuous improvement in service delivery.
How does this apply to you?
Anytime an incident or request is raised, the timer starts ticking as long it's within business hours. This does not mean the business hours of your hospital, but the business hours of the corporate office where your IT department operates. This is due to the limited size of the department and being the busiest shift. There is limited support after business hours such as lockouts, password resets, and major service disruptions such as a server going down.
SLAs help you and the IT department keep track of the ticket you create. We are obligated to fulfill or troubleshoot the ticket within a certain amount of time. There are circumstances that could impede SLAs due to users, not responding to tickets or actions beyond control like transit times of items or delayed services. Vendors can also cause disruption as the IT department is waiting on responses from them.
It's important that communication is established so both parties can resolve the ticket. If communication is no longer kept, the Agent handling the ticket has the right to close the incident or request due to a lack of communication.
How are SLAs defined?
It depends on the incident or request.
Incidents - are broken down into, Priority, Category, Urgency, and Impact. It could be as quick as a few minutes to several hours or days. Hospitals and Information Technology classify priorities differently. What hospitals consider stat may not be considered urgent in IT. An example is someone who forgets their password for an account. Although it may prevent the user from logging in immediately, there have been instances where priorities have been misused or abused. The IT department typically reserves the priority of "urgent" for situations where a server's malfunction has a widespread impact.
- Most SLAs are low-priority, but it doesn't always mean a slow response time. Just like how Doctors and Nurses are able to triage, so does the IT department. In most cases, an incident can be resolved fairly quickly.
- Incidents submitted outside of regular business hours, including evenings, weekends, and holidays, are handled differently. The IT department assesses the urgency of the matter and if it can be addressed on the next business day, the incident will be delayed accordingly.
Requests - also have the same status mentioned above. Most requests will have some type of approval which can further delay the fulfillment of the request. Requests also follow business hour rules meaning that they only get processed during corporate hours Monday through Friday, 8 AM to 5 PM, with the exception of emergent requests such as Agency which are predefined. Agency requests are still processed on the weekends but no later than the prescribed times mentioned in the request.
- Requests aren't processed after corporate hours except for emergent Agency onboarding requests prescribed by the request itself.
- Requests will typically have an SLA of two business days. This applies mostly to administrative requests such as new accounts, file shares, permissions, or new access to an application. Requests that require approvers could result in delays.
- Requests to hardware usually take more time as this could require multiple approvals plus shipping time.
- Please note that what is considered a high priority by the requesters may not be the same for the IT department. We will do our utmost to assist, however, please bear in mind that the IT department supports several hospitals, not just yours.
Coming in the near future - SLA tables