1 / 28

Service Contracts Making Life Better

Service Contracts Making Life Better. Louis Sellers Contracts Administration Manager General Counsel Division. Service Contracts Making Life Better. I am not an attorney. I do not give legal advice.

erwin
Download Presentation

Service Contracts Making Life Better

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Service ContractsMaking Life Better Louis Sellers Contracts Administration Manager General Counsel Division

  2. Service ContractsMaking Life Better • I am not an attorney. • I do not give legal advice. • I am offering my personal thoughts and opinions, not those of the Office of the Attorney General. • Check with your agency’s attorneys regarding any contractual or legal issues.

  3. Service ContractsMaking Life Better • Service Level Agreements (SLA) and milestones in service contracts • Communications in service contracts • Modifying a contract by customs and practice • Unauthorized performance evaluations

  4. Find SLAs That Make Life Better! • Use SLAs that are related to your requirements • Use measurable outcomes • Use SLAs that are reasonable • Use SLAs that are easily understood

  5. What Are Some Factors That Might Be Usable SLAs? • Response time to communications • Response time for an incident • Resolution time for an incident • Billing dispute resolution time

  6. What Are Some Factors That Are More Difficult SLAs? • Courteous communications • Appropriate dress • Professional demeanor • Subject matter expertise • Quality of decisions

  7. Harder to Measure Satisfaction Factors • Helpdesk satisfaction (use surveys and call-back counts) • Report quality (use metrics for content, citations, grammar, formatting) • Personal presentation of staff (define appropriate dress and appropriate language) • Personal interaction with staff (define “easy to work with”, “effective communicators”, etc.)

  8. Milestones That Make Life Better • Place milestones at important points where a change in the process is noticeable: • When contractor arrives • When a report is delivered • When a report is accepted • When a particular service is made available • When an old system is turned off • When a new process is accepted • When a contractor identifies and defines a requirement

  9. Milestones That Make Life Better • At interim points during the creation of a report: • When information gathering is complete • When surveys are distributed • When a draft review meeting takes place • When consensus is reached • At the completion of some reasonable hours of work: • A specific number of hours of design effort • A specific number hours of customer training

  10. Communications in Service Contracts A successful communication is one that elicits the desired response.

  11. Communications in Service Contracts It is the responsibility of the sender of the message to ensure: • that it is received, • that it is understood, • and that will elicit the desired response.

  12. Communications in Service Contracts • Use a variety of communication channels • Face to face • Optimizes many complex discussions • Paper document • Has gravity and is durable • Email • Quick and convenient but may not appear serious • Telephone • Solves complex back and forth issues but may require documentation to memorialize the content • Smoke signals • Vague and now prohibited in most counties

  13. Communications in Service Contracts • Use a variety of tools • Tables • Quick identification of variance and outliers • Charts • Intuitive understanding of trends and outliers • Flow charts • Clearly show linear and iterative process • Diagrams • Show relationships and complexities

  14. Communications in Service Contracts • Tables

  15. Communications in Service Contracts

  16. Communications in Service Contracts Work in Progress Quality Rework Inventory

  17. Communications in Service Contracts • Diagrams show relationships

  18. Modifying a Contract by Customs and Practice • What does this mean? • Performing at a different level than is specified by the contract over time until everyone understands that this is the expected performance level.

  19. Modifying a Contract by Customs and Practice • How does this happen? • Not documenting low performance • Not discovering low performance • Not recognizing low performance • Not knowing what constitutes low performance

  20. Modifying a Contract by Customs and Practice • What else can happen? • A vendor may want to perform above the level that is required. • A vendor may accidentally overperform. • A vendor may not understand the requirements.

  21. Modifying a Contract by Customs and Practice • What is one to do? • Know what performance level is required. • Discover performance levels. • Learn to recognize performance levels. • Document low and high performance levels.

  22. Modifying a Contract by Customs and Practice • It is important to ensure that vendors perform at required levels, because the competitive procurement process relies on enforcement of contractual performance levels.

  23. Unauthorized Performance Evaluations • Who provides unauthorized performance evaluations? • Anyone with vendor contact might say: • “Gee, you did a great job!” • “This is NOT how it is done.” • “My fifth grader could have done this.” • “This is a lot better than what we expected.” • “We aren’t paying for this!”

  24. Unauthorized Performance Evaluations • Why does this happen? • Dedicated, hard-working people often do not know the details of the contract. • People often have an idea of what is right and wrong that is not necessarily aligned with what is in the contract. • People have experience with contracts that have other terms. • A particular level of performance may be good for one user and not for another. • It may not be a very good deal.

  25. Unauthorized Performance Evaluations • Why is this a problem? • It may mislead a vendor into poor performance. • It may shift a vendor’s focus from what the contract intended. • It may be detrimental to the agency’s effort to elicit performance. • It may be used as evidence in court.

  26. Unauthorized Performance Evaluations • What is one to do? • Communicate to the vendor how performance evaluations are – and are not – provided and why this is important. • Communicate to those with vendor contact how performance evaluations are – and are not – provided and why this is important.

  27. Service ContractsMaking Life Better • SLAs and milestones in service contracts • Communications in service contracts • Modifying a contract by customs and practice • Unauthorized performance evaluations

  28. Contact Information Louis Sellers Contracts Administration Manager General Counsel Division (512) 936-1676 louis.sellers@oag.state.tx.us

More Related