It happens in every contraction or economic crisis--everyone looks for ways to cut cost, executives chop heads and vendors dream up new ways for delivering charges for services. SIP Trunks are hot, but what do you do to avoid getting burned? Because once the head counts are satisfied and the dust begins to settle down from the rush to squeeze dollars--do you have in place what it takes to have a meaningful and legally enforceable Service Level Agreement (SLA)?Legal terms and conditions and contract language are akin to an artful dodger. A statement of services or deliverables doesn't necessarily constitute an SLA. This is one area where you don't cheap out nor do you assign the task to the corporate legal team without the experience and background. This process can become expensive and the higher-dollar-value contracts mean more cause for concern. Lesser dollar contracts often fall into the "it looks okay to me" category and are too readily signed off.
When the provider fails to perform or meet QoS, uptime, bandwidth or any defined metric within your SLA, what is the course of resolution and how much time is acceptable for complete restoration of service? When the provider fails to meet the metrics, what is the penalty? In the mechanics of the SLA, it comes down to whether or not it is meaningful for the carrier or provider and for the customer. What happens when the provider does meet the conditions of restoration of services but the disruptions begin to outweigh the projected benefits of the service? This is known as erosion of benefits.
A third area that is often overlooked is the customer responsibility. Maybe you have a great SLA in hand and it's passed the legal review with flying colors and life is good and you have no known issues with the provider. How do you know your provider is delivering to the metrics of the contract? What watchdogs do you have in place to report on QoS, voice quality, security, bandwidth, uptime or any other metric written in your SLA? How reliable and connected is the reporting, and will your information substantiate any claim for services not received or performances not met?
In the past almost everyone has complained about phone companies, carriers and providers. In fact, telecommunications as an industry has a pretty contestable track record when it comes to customer service and not everyone talks about great cell service. The cell guys aren't the only ones you need to worry about.
Dollar savings have a way of blinding folks and seducing them by promising savings without regard to performance and the impact that failure in meeting the requirements can have on an organization. As services and applications move away from traditional forms of delivery, are new methods putting too much risk in favor of cost savings? Examine your SLAs to determine whether or not your legal review has a meeting of the minds with the provider. Then assess whether or not you have an enforceable SLA with remedy for issues that operationally won't drain your resources and claimed benefits. Without mechanisms in place within your network to report on the metrics, don't expect the provider's metrics to justify the providers' services, because you wouldn't dare do that with an accounting system.
