SLA: build bridges, not walls

The Russian outsourcing market has reached the stage of its development where clients are ready to outsource any non-core business processes (IT, HR accounting, accounting and legal support, staff recruitment, etc.). Market development spurs competition, which forces service providers to pay increased attention to service quality. And although in recent years the business has grown significantly in terms of methodological preparation and without further explanation understands what SLA and KPI are, but, unfortunately, many providers and their customers are still too superficial about the service level agreement. Of course, SLA can be used within the company (between divisions), but today we will consider it only as a tool for quality management and evaluation of services provided by an outsourcing provider.

In practice, one often encounters both multi-page SLAs with zero service and the opposite situation. Such examples gave rise to the opinion that the SLA is a kind of wall, which the provider needs to isolate itself from the “Wishlist” and customer complaints. Although such agreements, on the contrary, have appeared in order to serve as a bridge between the customer and the service provider.

The essence of the SLA is that instead of clerical phrases in the style of “properly provided service”, fix in the most measurable way - what, to whom and in what time frame will be done. Fixation takes place in the form of determination rules, a set of indicators and criteria for their evaluation. This allows you to determine the responsibility for the non-provision by the contractor of the expected level of service and to make transparency in the relationship, thereby simplifying the quality control of services.

For our company, the implementation of SLA is not a formal obligation dictated by the requirements of certificates. A conscious choice on the part of Intercomp as a provider. We determined for ourselves a corporate standard for the quality provision of services and then based on it we developed an agreement on the level of service.

Not just a contract

Thanks to the agreement, both parties (customer and provider) are moving to a single conceptual level with regard to the quality of services. In addition, the contractor receives clear algorithms for solving specific problems. How long is it important to fix a problem? How to prioritize the elimination of several simultaneously occurring faults? Thanks to the formalization of indicators, SLA makes the quality of service measurable and transparent, makes it possible to increase the likelihood of identifying problems, increase the speed of response to them and the speed of their elimination.

In Russia, for some reason, many people miss the point that for a provider, the strategic benefit of implementing SLA should be to increase the loyalty of key customers. This tool allows you to evaluate your services from the point of view of consumers at least due to careful attention to complaints and suggestions. Ideally, you need to adjust all your internal business processes to the aspirations of customers. Indeed, it is relatively easy for competitors to copy the price and assortment policies, but a deep understanding of customer needs is a unique and difficult to reproduce factor for increasing competitiveness.

At the same time, it is very important that in the race for the cherished 99.99% agreement does not form excessive expectations. World experience shows that you should not use good-sounding "marketing" promises - in the long run it is better to "promise" than "promise". In other words, a stable, reputable provider will not allow itself cheap “marketing” moves. For example, at Datto (recently named Forbes magazine the most profitable IT start-up in the USA), the real response time for a ticket marked “urgently” is about 5 minutes, although all client documents have an answer in an hour. And this is not an exception, but a fairly common practice - studies show that most Western service providers use SLAs to formulate the correct expectations of the level of service and increase user loyalty.

For a SLA client, this is the way to maximum transparency and clarity in monitoring and evaluating the quality of consumed services. It makes it possible to reduce the risks of financial losses caused by the provider and receive compensation in case of non-compliance of the service with the level guaranteed in the agreement.

Az, Beeches, Lead, Verb, Welcome ...

When developing an SLA, it’s worth the effort to find out the needs of the customer. The fact is that many people themselves cannot accurately assess which level of service they require. Having shown the possibilities of regulating the cost of business processes depending on their characteristics, you will help the customer determine the best option for him by the ratio of price / quality. Do not forget that a well-written document should also provide for the most “painless” way out of cooperation. This significantly reduces the fears of customers becoming dependent on a bad decision and can be a decisive factor when choosing a provider.

In order to ensure the highest level of SLA performance, it is necessary to establish a relationship with a balanced scorecard of the executing company. When introducing KPI tied to specific clauses of the agreement, the employee understands that in order to increase his performance indicators (read - salaries), he must provide clients with the specified level of service.

The choice of KPIs and criteria for their evaluation depends on the particular service. The general point is that the set of indicators should not be too large (they are called key ones for good reason), and the criteria themselves should be clear, not vague. Choose parameters that are easy to measure. Whenever possible, they should be evaluated automatically, although this is highly dependent on the type of service and maybe not in all cases.

How about us?

For example, as part of our serviceIntercomp Direct, we evaluate the quality of work of our employees in three groups of indicators: payroll, personnel records (preparation of personnel documents), preparation and delivery of regulated reporting. Each group is evaluated in terms of time and quality. The time indicator is assessed as timely / untimely, that is, completed on time or in violation. The quality indicator is evaluated by the criterion of correctness: with errors / without errors.

Here is the formula for calculating one of the indicators: “Percentage of payrolls executed without errors”


Managers of service departments carry out operational control in manual mode, then the completed SLA forms are sent to customers for approval. Additionally, there is a hotline of quality, to which any client can report on their problems or wishes.

The order of our further actions depends on the values ​​of the obtained indicators. If the level of service is lower than expected, then the amount of the service bill is reduced and an action plan is developed to eliminate the shortcomings. Penalties may apply to performers. If the service was held at the highest level, they will receive a bonus.

Naturally, the proper level of service is achieved not only with fines and staff incentives. Rather, these are additional incentives. To ensure that the SLA is respected, all internal processes are aligned so that each specialist at the Intercomp operations center has the opportunity to comply with the obligations assumed by the company. There is always an operational control of group leaders to ensure timeliness and accuracy. Employees who have identified errors in their work receive internal advice from a methodologist and (if this is possible) are sent to appropriate professional courses to deepen their knowledge in this area.

If, as a result of operational control, a risk of deviation from the established quality indicators is identified or such a deviation can occur "in fact", information about this is immediately entered into the automated risk and non-compliance management system within the existing quality management system, which allows you to quickly take all necessary measures to eliminate and preventing further such deviations.

Customer focus is the basis of loyalty formation

For any b2b service company, intermittent failures or errors are unavoidable. And the goal of implementing SLAs should not be to never commit them, much less to protect themselves from claims. It is very important that your experts are ready to listen, hear and constructively perceive the needs of customers. This approach allows you to provide a really high level of service, to constantly maintain a stable quality of services even in cases of significant changes in the market situation, legislation or other external conditions.