Operational Excellence through service-level agreement

A scientific, research and governmental entity in the Kingdom of Saudi responsible for applied research to serve sustainable development and provide recommendations regarding renewable energy and atomic energy on the national scale
This institution is mandated to develop the necessary human capacities in the nuclear and renewable energy sectors and to localize the industrial products resulting from these sectors
On their quest to operational excellence, they realized the need for effective deployment of service-level agreement (SLA) across their portfolio of services

As a rapidly growing organization the institution required effective SLA to define a commitment between a service provider and a customer
It was required to take the form of a binding document between institution’s business support departments and its client departments like R&D, Operations, etc.
Aside from setting the expectations of the service provider, it was expected that SLA provides a mechanism to create and improve a business relationship between two or more parties
The responsibilities of both parties were to be clearly stated and agreed upon, putting them on the same page

A cross-functional team was formed to drive the improvement efforts, Agile Dynamics team worked closely with the client to define and design SLA’s two important areas: services and management
Under services, it should include at the least the following components: List of services provided, list of services excluded, service availability, condition of level of service (or different levels for multiple services), duties and responsibilities of each party, response time, escalation procedures, resolution time and service credits
For the management area, the following are the components that should be present: Measurement standards and methods, reporting process, conflict resolution process, indemnification clause and other exclusions due to unforeseen events

Adopting SLA to guide brought several significant advantages as it helped and facilitated improvement of management performance
Business leaders were enabled to track resources better and allocate them more effectively
Also, it reduced risk because of scope and responsibility details, as well as improved communication between parties, which can reduce adverse conflict resolution
Ultimately the overall Operational Excellence performance has been improved by 28% index points

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