About

Successful negotiation, documentation and management of service level agreements is designed to help managers overcome the challenges of ensuring adequate performance when contracting in today’s business environment. This course will help you to understand the business implications and nature of purchaser-provider relationships by introducing performance measures and management practices that will ensure the success of these relationships.

By applying effective contracting strategies and efficient structuring of service level agreements this course will help you to improve your business performance and reduce costs.

Key Learning Objectives:
•    Get what you want from your business partners
•    Avoid performance related disputes with your business partners
•    Identify what objectives are important
•    Define your measures and how you will monitor them
•    Choose “penalties” and rewards to motivate
•    Achieve continuous improvement

Previous delegates of this seminar said:

“I certainly gained a thorough insight into preparing an SLA.”
Roslyn Pere, Supplier Contracts Controller, Air NZ

“It covered all aspects of SLAs and cleared up misconceptions that I held.”
Raymond Urwin, Travel Manager, Royal NZ Navy

Agenda

Day One

An introduction to Service Level Agreements
•    How to recognise an SLA and the variety of forms they take
•    Understanding the differentiation between SLAs and other terms and conditions
•    Common uses and forms of service level agreements
•    Purpose of SLAs considered from different perspectives - purchaser, provider, in-house providers
•    The growth of partnering arrangements versus traditional penalties based agreements
•    Common problems associated with SLAs
•    Why are SLAs fashionable?


When to use Service Level Agreements
•    Identifying whether to apply an SLA solution
•    Identifying when an SLA is inappropriate
•    Doing the sums - is an SLA route the right way forward?
•    The cost-benefit determination on whether to introduce an SLA
•    An introduction to the total cost of ownership principles
•    Identifying the key elements of an effective SLA
•    The importance of identifying your organisation’s objectives and understanding those of your service provider
•    The relationship between objectives, measures, targets, and incentives & disincentives
•    The debate on the use of penalties, liquidated damages, or retaining a right to sue for general damages in SLAs
•    Carrot or stick approach - determining the correct tone of relationship to encourage performance


How to choose the most appropriate measures
In identifying the most effective measures you need to ensure that you have the right team, the measures align with your business strategy, you understand the processes involved and how technology will be used. This session considers these factors and -
•    The use of “smart” measures
•    What can be learnt from a balanced scorecard approach?


Process mapping
Process mapping can aid with the development of effective SLAs by highlighting the steps that are critical, or are causing bottlenecks that require closer management by implementing performance measures relevant to those steps. This session includes:
•    The steps involved in process mapping
•    The additional benefits that accrue
•    An exercise of process mapping on processes relevant to the course participants

Day Two

Planning for SLAs
This session walks course participants through each of the steps necessary to develop an effective SLA with each of the participants using an example relevant to their business. The session culminates in the course participants applying the knowledge gained to date in developing and discussing the key components to their own developed SLAs.

Effective service level management and contractor management
The key to the success of your SLA is effective, close and constant management and communication between the client and the service provider. The following session explores the issues at the heart of a successful relationship.
•    Ensuring an effective working relationship
•    The importance of designated key people at client and provider ends who are committed to ensuring effective, open communication and who have the end result in mind

SLA reviews
•    Understanding the difference between reviews of SLA targets and reviews of SLAs
•    Scheduling and conducting reviews of your SLAs and the performance of service provider
•    How to conduct the review
•    Common performance issues and how to deal with them
•    Benchmarking performance
•    Understanding how SLAs can go bad and fail to deliver as per expectations

When good contracts go bad - Terminating SLAs
Knowing when and how to terminate an SLA is essential. This session explores the process and key considerations when you are considering termination.
•    Understanding your rights to terminate an SLA
•    Applying the contractual processes for termination

The contract
•    Documenting effective SLAs
•    Key issues to consider when negotiating & documenting the SLA
•    Typical SLA documentation

Negotiation skills
•    Understanding how to manage the power that exists in a relationship and around the negotiating table is crucial to getting the best outcome.
•    This relaxed session focuses on how to increase your power and how to use and combat negotiation tactics that are frequently used.

Facilitator

In-house Training