A New Approach to Contract Specification

Abstract

The task of producing and reviewing contracts — or service level agreements (SLAs) — requires a detailed knowledge of the business processes, business drivers (e.g. costs, efficiency) and co-operating business units. In a large organization it is impossible for a small number of individuals to carry out this task, so responsibility for SLA specification is generally distributed. Differences in approach to the task can result in inconsistencies in the way measures are used within similar SLAs. One consequence of this is that a large number of unnecessary performance measures may be created. Mechanisms for monitoring, storing, processing and maintaining each of these additional measures have to be implemented and maintained, and large amounts of extra data therefore have to be handled. Additionally, changes to the process, the organizational units and particularly the business drivers can impact on the measures chosen for a specific SLA. There is, therefore, a need to:

• minimize the time and effort required to produce SLAs;

• create and use measures consistently;

• minimize the measures required for each SLA;

• maximize the flexibility of SLAs with respect to the business drivers.