Service Level Agreements (SLAs) have always been a non-negotiable part of technology vendor contracts for enterprise organisations. They set clear targets for the levels of service you expect and provide a framework to continuously measure against. It’s easy to have a conversation about “not good enough” if you started by defining what “good” looks like. But even though this is standard for Enterprise organisations, it is surprising how often medium-sized businesses overlook SLAs when entering into agreements with IT providers.

SLAs should not be optional. They’re a critical tool for ensuring your business gets the IT support it needs.

Why SLAs Matter

SLAs are more than just paperwork; they are essential for both your business and your provider. Downtime loses you clients, tech issues cause you frustration, waiting on help costs you money. SLAs are time-based targets for how long it takes for an IT provider to provide the help you need.

They set clear expectations, outlining the level of service you expect when something is broken, your business is impacted, or you have asked for help. And they ensure internal accountability for your provider, setting internal expectations and targets for their team to complete your tasks, issues, and requests. If you don’t have target SLAs in place, there is no commitment on when you will get help.

Key SLA Metrics

There are a lot of different approaches to SLAs and we’ve seen targets that are overcomplicated, ineffective, and hard to measure. SLAs are pointless unless they drive the right behaviour. You don’t need to care about the detail, you care about the outcome. For example - in a support contract, the most critical measures are

Time to Respond - How quickly the provider acknowledges and begins working on your issue.
Time to Resolve - The timeframe for resolving the issue entirely. This is the most important measure for operational continuity.

Response and resolution targets should reflect what your business can tolerate. For example, if a critical outage takes your operations offline, you need it picked up and resolved fast. Providers offering a 2+ day response time for critical issues are not meeting the needs of most businesses. Tailor resolution times to your operational requirements. Consider agreeing to shorter resolution times (e.g., 4 hours for critical issues) with a 90% success rate rather than longer times with a 100% success rate. This approach drives urgency and prioritises your business’ needs.

Avoid agreeing to vague metrics that don’t include clear, actionable targets that directly measure the experience.

Red Flags to Watch For

Not everyone offers SLAs, and not every SLA is worthwhile. Be cautious of providers who:

Don’t Offer SLAs: This signals a lack of process, maturity, and accountability (internally and to their clients).
Refuse Resolution SLAs: Open-ended timelines are unacceptable. There may be justifiable reasons why an SLA can’t be achieved (eg a third-party outage) but that doesn’t excuse every issue from having a target time to restore.
Set Unrealistic Worst-Case SLAs: For instance, two weeks for a simple request is a sign of poor service planning and resourcing. Can you wait two weeks when you have a last-minute new joiner who needs access to your systems?
Meet response targets with an automated reply: Response targets should be measured from when the ticket is assigned, and work has begun - not from when the ticket is automatically created in a ticketing system.
Fail to Differentiate Issue Categories: Incidents (e.g., something is broken) should be resolved much faster than requests (e.g., you need something new).

SLAs Are Just the Start

While SLAs are essential, they’re only one part of the vendor relationship. Think of them as the foundation for reactive support. Well-considered Service Level targets ensure your business’ reactive needs are met, but your relationship with the provider should be a proactive, improvement-based partnership. The overall health and success of your partnership should be measured by the value IT provides to your business - reducing cost and risk, driving innovation, and improving experience (topics we’ll explore in a future post)

If you’re a medium-sized business considering a technology provider, don’t skip the SLA conversation. Insist on meaningful metrics that align with your business operations, and don’t accept vague or irrelevant terms. SLAs are a powerful tool to ensure your IT provider delivers the service you need to succeed. If you need help, check out our Technology Advisory services or send us a chat anytime.