Service Level Agreement (SLA) template
Service Level Agreements (SLA) are one of the most common contracts you'll need at your business. But could you generate SLAs faster and more efficiently with this free SLA template?
Service Level Agreements (SLA) are one of the most common contracts you'll need at your business. But could you generate SLAs faster and more efficiently with this free SLA template?
It's common for businesses to use Service Level Agreements to manage their relationships with vendors and service providers. If you haven't already signed one at work, chances are you've at least heard of them. They're an essential tool for businesses that want to guarantee the quality and reliability of the services they receive, and offer that guarantee to their customers.
But what are SLAs, who uses them, and how can you create one? Let's find out.
SLA stands for Service Level Agreement, and the term is used to describe a legal agreement that outlines the level of service expected from a vendor.
Parties use this type of business contract to agree on the standards of service they’d like to receive, including the scope of work, the quality of service, and the timeframe for delivery.
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In doing so, SLAs offer a clear understanding of expectations and responsibilities, like uptime and availability, response time for service requests, and performance benchmarks. They're also referred to as performance contracts for this reason.
SLAs are amongst the most common commercial contracts, largely because they can be used across a variety of industries and they have varied applications.
But creating and reviewing SLAs at scale can quickly become a problem for legal teams at fast-growth businesses, who often report feeling buried in low-value work.
Now you understand what an SLA is, and why they are important. But when should you actually use one? We've listed a few common use cases below. You might need a Service Level Agreement template when:
When you engage a new service provider, they will naturally need to understand the level of service you expect from them. To ensure that these expectations are clear and measurable, businesses tend to ask a service provider to agree to an SLA prior to starting their service. This is usually provided in a package with other contracts, like a Statement of Work, NDA and so on.
When you outsource a business function, such as IT support or customer service, you will need to set clear expectations for the vendor. An SLA is used to define these expectations and provide a framework for managing the vendor relationship. This helps you to maintain service levels between insourced and outsourced functions - thanks to your template SLA.
When you have an ongoing relationship with a vendor, an SLA is a great point of reference. It's a way to make sure the vendor knows exactly what is expected of them, what deadlines they need to meet, and what a positive commercial relationship looks like.
When you provide a service to customers, it's a great idea to set clear expectations for the level of service they will receive. This could be response times for customer service inquiries or delivery times for products. An SLA can be used to define these service standards and provide a clear benchmark for performance.
This provides reassurance to the potential customer that you'll deliver on their high expectations and are happy to be held accountable if you fail to do so.
Due to their ubiquity, various teams will interact with SLAs in various different ways.
These teams will often include procurement, legal, operations, and IT. Put simply, if you have service expectations that you need to define and manage, you will probably need to use a Service Level Agreement, based on a template SLA.
But often, legal counsel will be responsible for creating and owning the SLA template. They will usually have approval rights over the final versions too, depending on their risk appetite.
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The services that your SLA covers will depend on the needs of your business and the nature of the service being provided. The general rule is that a service should be defined and clarified in a SLA if it's technical or where expectations can be clearly quantified in some way.
Here are some common examples of SLA-defined services:
For example, when it comes to customer support SLAs, buyers will almost always want to know how quickly they can receive a response from customer service if they're stuck. This is because not receiving support can block them from using the services they've paid for. Having a robust Service Level Agreement template can help here.
Service Level Agreements are legal contracts, which means that they are enforceable by law and within courts - so long as they are written and used correctly.
However, it's important to note that the consequences of not meeting the service levels defined in an SLA are typically defined within the agreement itself, rather than being determined by law. These might include penalties, service credits, or the right to terminate the contract.
Finding a way to create and process SLAs at scale is important for any business that hopes to sign lots of new customers.
Whether you’re experiencing difficulty deciding what your SLA should include, or you’re simply unsure where to start, agreeing service level agreements can quickly become a bottleneck that holds your team back.
WLet's explore the manual SLA process from end to end. We’ll discuss how to create an SLA, the challenges you might face, and the must-have content you need to include.
Creating a comprehensive SLA template is key to ensuring that your company’s service expectations are clearly defined and manageable. Therefore, it is critical that you don't miss any key elements.
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Not sure what to include? Well, in addition to the basic elements of a contract, an SLA template will typically include the following provisions:
Your SLA should include basic information about the parties involved and the people that the agreement will cover. This should refer specifically to the different stakeholders and parties involved in the agreement.
Use our free Service Level Agreement example PDF above to get started.
When drafting your SLAs, you need to set out a clear scope of what services are being provided, and a definition of what these services entail.
This may vary between parties and case uses, but each and every SLA needs to define clearly which services are being provided, as well as the more specific details such as the quality of service, the timeframe for delivery, and the metrics for measuring performance.
Your SLA should clearly define the specific standards of service that are expected. This might include response times, uptime, quality standards, or any other metric that is relevant to the service being provided. These standards should be both measurable and specific to ensure that there is no ambiguity about what is expected.
The SLA should outline how the service will be monitored and how performance will be reported. This might include regular reports, real-time dashboards, or any other method that allows both parties to track performance against the promises made.
If the service provider fails to meet the agreed service levels, the SLA should define what penalties or remedies will apply. This might include the right to terminate the agreement, or any other remedy that is appropriate.
As with all contracts, SLAs should clearly define the contract's duration, and the terms under which the agreement can be terminated early. This might include termination for convenience, termination for cause, or even the frustration of a contract.
The SLA should also outline how disputes will be resolved. This might include escalation procedures, mediation, arbitration, or any other dispute resolution mechanism that is appropriate.
An SLA should also outline what jurisdiction(s) the legal agreement will be governed under if a dispute arises.
Even with an exhaustive list of what to include, creating an SLA from scratch can be a real pain. In fact, business users hoping to improve their contract process frequently complain of how painful the process can be. At its worst, the process looks something like this:
1. A user emails the legal team and says “I need an SLA.” The legal counsel, already buried in work, suggests that the user finds it themselves on the shared drive.
2. The user finds a template (not necessarily the most current version), fills it in manually and emails it to the legal team for review. Legal corrects various details and returns it to the user via email.
3. The user then sends the SLA to the service provider for negotiation. They comment and mark up the contracts in Word, emailing it back. If there are still disagreements over the terms, each party will redline the document and pass it back and forth, typically saving and sharing a new document each time.
4. Eventually, an agreement is reached and both parties sign, either with a wet signature and a sign/scan/send process or an electronic signature provider. This tends to be either Adobe Sign or DocuSign or a DocuSign alternative the company pays for separately.
5. Once signed, the SLA will be emailed to the relevant parties and stakeholders (legal, procurement, and so on), and hopefully saved on a shared drive like Dropbox or Google Drive.
This approach to creating Service Level Agreements is incredibly inefficient and time-consuming, though. Let's quickly explore why before explaining what you can do to transform the process.
As you've just heard, building SLAs from the ground up is hard work. But why? These are just a few of the various pain points our customers have experienced before automating their contract workflow:
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The good news is that there is a better way to create SLAs.
Juro's all-in-one contract management platform is collaborative, flexible and data-rich, making it quick and easy to generate Service Level Agreements for your business.
Juro's automated contract templates enable commercial teams to self-serve confidently on SLAs using a template pre-defined and approved by legal. These can be populated in seconds either using Juro's Q&A forms or by pulling the contract data in from another business system via an integration.
This will free up time for your legal team and ensure that business users always have access to the most up-to-date template.
These can then be reviewed, approved, eSigned, stored and tracked within Juro, rather than jumping between several different tools. Juro’s all-in-one contract management platform enables your team to agree and manage contracts in one unified workspace, enabling you to:
To find out more about Juro's contract management solution and how it can streamline your contract workflows, hit the button below.
Juro is the #1-rated contract platform globally for speed of implementation.
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