SLA

About the SLA Template

Define expectations clearly with strong SLAs

At their core, a Service Level Agreement (SLA) is exactly what it sounds like: an agreement between a vendor and a customer that identifies the level of service the vendor will provide to the customer. Generally, SLAs include details like due dates, turnaround times, goals and KPIs, metrics by which the service is measured, and steps to be taken if the goals are not met.

You see SLAs most often in software and tech companies, but can (and should) be leveraged anywhere a service is being provided, including fleets.

Not only does an SLA ensure your fleet understands exactly what is expected from them by the stakeholder—which could be an external stakeholder like a customer, or an internal stakeholder like another department—it also makes it clear to the stakeholder what the fleet is capable of achieving, and how quickly it can be achieved.

What Makes a Good SLA

Clarity and alignment are the two most important things that make for a good SLA.

Start by getting input from the stakeholders involved in the engagement.

This helps everyone stay on the same page for every engagement, and keeps everyone on target and accountable for their actions. During this alignment conversation, it’s important to determine:

• The responsibilities of all parties

• Who controls what aspects of the processes

• What metrics are tracked to determine success

• How performance will be measured

• How information will be shared

• What happens when parts of the SLA aren’t met

Once everyone is on the same page, you can start building the actual service level agreement and focus on clarity so there is no ambiguity, confusion, or room for interpretation.

We recommend keeping these factors in mind when creating an SLA:

• Identify the critical metrics for the engagement

• Make sure it’s fair to all parties

• Ensure it’s clearly written and easy to understand

• Keep it simple and focus on the most important metrics

• Include information on things that are beyond your control, like weather, and what happens in those cases

• Focus on what your team can control

When you start working on the SLA, work with your stakeholders to establish fair, achievable, and realistic standards, timelines, metrics, and goals.

Remember—you’ll be held accountable for what’s in the SLA, so make sure it’s realistic.

Considerations for SLAs

Internal SLAs between your department and an internal stakeholder help document the relationship and expectations on both sides, but aren’t legally enforceable (usually).

SLAs between your company and a customer or client factor into contracts and could be legally enforceable, though oftentimes they’re difficult to actually enforce, and whatever remediation you get out of it likely won’t cover the cost and pain of a failed process or project.

Still, it’s good to get in writing what the expectations are for every engagement to save the headaches and hassles that come from a lack of clarity and communication. Getting aligned and committed upfront instead of dealing with assumptions after the fact will help streamline the whole process and make future projects that much easier.

RTA Fleet SLA Template

Creating an SLA—especially your first one—takes a lot of upfront work, but it’s worth it. SLAs help you strengthen your relationship with your stakeholders and give your team clear goals to meet and expectations to uphold.

So, to make the SLA process a little easier, we’ve created a sample service level agreement template that you can leverage and customize to fit your specific needs and projects.

The sample SLA is designed for a one-year engagement between RTA and a fleet operations team specifically to streamline the service and delivery processes to facilitate a chassis buy program, design an effective build cycle to support RTA’s year-end pull ahead of capital dollar requests, develop a pool program, and more. You can see all of the goals outlines in section V of the sample template.

This is just a jumping off point so you don’t have to make the whole thing from scratch.

Depending on the engagement your fleet is entering into, you’ll need to create specific details and requirements. But, you can start by updating the items highlighted in yellow, and then adjust the rest of the document as needed.

Once you have a solid baseline, you can save it as your own fleet’s template and have it readily available for every engagement your fleet takes on.