Service Level Agreements

This is my response to Jason Gurd's latest post.... 
http://everythingfacilities.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/slave-to-convention.html


SLA's are great for setting expectations, "we will arrive on site within 4 hrs of a callout being logged" that gives peace of mind to the buyer of the service.
And the message can be relayed to the end user, so they have a rough idea, when their problem will be looked at.
that is total quality management

I've never (apart from one, 2 month post) been involved with a contract that had financial penalties built into it, so very often even though these callout response times were set in the SLA, the supplier would not meet them because of other business commitments, therefore maybe that is the time for a financial penalty and or pay for a premium service, dependent on the importance of the kit and faults to be fixed.
So one could argue that the SLA is used as a big stick (not literally)by the customer to make sure the supplier delivers the service that is expected and needed.

The 2 month thing i referred to above, had kpi's built into the sla from all directions and with financial penalties as well, some realistic, a few not.. Not sure of its use, the customer liked it though as it gave them a measure of the efficiency of the contract.

so my view is the SLA'a can be an instrument of use, that result in total quality management solution, they can be good and bad, but from a client perspective, if the trusting relationship was better, then maybe they are not needed... and then.....

Having sat on both sides of the fence i can see their merit, but do we need to re-invent the wheel?

If suppliers/ service providers were 100% efficient and trustworthy, then a PO will suffice, well almost.