Nowadays, having different areas within a company working together can greatly improve their performance. Therefore, here comes the SLA, or Service Level Agreement, translating into service level agreement.
This strategy is most commonly seen among a business's marketing and sales team. However, you may be thinking: “wouldn’t it be right for these areas to work together”? And the answer is: yes!
But, even though it may seem obvious, this does not always happen. We need to think that, regardless of the area, everyone within a company is wanting results. In this way, having collaboration between them can bring benefits to everyone.
Now, we need to talk about what the SLA itself is!
What is the SLA (Service Level Agreement)?
The Service Level Agreement, in Portuguese, service level agreement, is nothing more than an agreement between different sectors of a company. Generally, this agreement is most common between the sales and marketing areas of a business.
His objective is to help the company achieve better results with the collaboration of these sectors. Therefore, this agreement defines the roles and goals of each person in these areas. And it works as a document that outlines a path for employees to follow.
Thus, this same document serves to keep the business “feet” on the ground. This prevents the creation of unrealistic expectations based on planning.
An example that is part of this agreement: a company's commercial team can have a better definition of the number of Leads to work with. And in this way, it helps with the transition of these Leads between the marketing and sales areas.
Why is it important to have an SLA?
Implementing this agreement can bring several benefits to your business. Mainly to map out the roles of each team to achieve your company's goals.
This makes it possible to focus on what really matters, leaving the sectors aligned with the objectives. This way, employees focus on what they need to accomplish, performing more efficiently.
This way, the entire company is aligned with the same goals and deadlines as well. Remembering that the SLA facilitates and speeds up decision-making, preventing actions from different teams from conflicting.
With a well-established alignment, internal communication also improves, as more focused monitoring of these processes begins.
Therefore, this attention to detail helps when calculating the efforts in each area. However, this measurement takes place through the use of metrics. To do this, your company can use Analytics tools to interpret the data obtained.
How to create an SLA for your company?
To create an effective service level agreement, you can follow a few steps as a basis, but always fit the format of your business.
And what steps are these? Stay tuned and we’ll tell you!
Definition of objectives
This is when planning begins, where the business strategy points will be decided.
At this stage, the teams must come together to discuss the objectives. Analyze the information to find out what fees will be present in the company's plan. Then, they will have to define the metrics and KPIs that will be used.
Set the limits of each area
In this part, the teams need to decide each other's responsibility, that is, where their actions begin and end.
For example, a marketing team here will have to be focused on nurturing leads, while the commercial team pays attention to concluding a deal.
However, do not forget that here it will be necessary to decide the method for both MQL and SQL.
Record your choices
Yes, it is important to record everything that is decided at the meeting! This way, the details will always be available for teams to check. This helps maintain organization and better control of activities.
It is essential to keep an eye on the details present in the SLA, so document everything to facilitate these processes.
Maintain good communication
Maintaining constant communication is essential during the processes. Because if you wait to analyze the data after a certain period of time, it may end up being late or too late to make changes.
Therefore, solving small errors or problems as soon as they appear is better and speeds up the activity of each team. Leaders must always be willing to help employees.
Pay attention to KPIs and metrics
As we told you above, eventually the time comes to use tools that involve KPIs and metrics. Therefore, it is necessary to follow the details, to be able to resolve the problems as soon as possible.
We need to remember that each area must be attentive to these details, in order to exchange information with other teams to stay aligned in relation to the objectives.
Adapt according to the strategy
This is where your team should study all the points, and from there, adapt the strategies. See where they got it right, where they went wrong, what needs to be improved, this is the moment of learning.
With this, your company will be able to prepare and make better decisions. Having an SLA between sectors is advantageous in many aspects, especially for achieving results.
Do you understand how important having integration between areas and teams is? Now that you know all this, it's time to get your hands dirty!
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