A Service Level Agreement, or SLA, is a guarantee of performance in a contract, with penalties for not hitting the published elements. For example, a customer might have a guaranteed 4 hour response window to equipment issues, or a guarantee on spare part arrival of 24 hours or less.
Why Does it Matter to Field Service
If the field service organization is not able to fix the equipment in a timely manner, there can be severe monetary penalties to the organization Service Level Agreements' typically cover equipment, software, and services; but there are a number of exclusions such as: unauthorized changes, non-recommended use, failure to perform required maintenance, failures caused by unsupported add-ons, financial breach of contract, etc. The big thing is usually Uptime levels - what percentage of use can I expect from this machine? A simple way to calculate your SLA attainment rate is by using the following formula:
% of SLA's being met = # of WO's with SLA met / # WO's Closed