AM EDITORIAL: Service Level Agreements In Nigeria’s Aviation Sector
A Service Level Agreement (SLA) is a formal document, a legally binding contract, signed by a service provider and a customer, specifying the quality and scope of the services that will be delivered. It defines the scope of work, timelines for delivery, confidentiality levels, and the criteria for measuring the quality of work delivered.
It comes in three forms of either service-based SLA, customer-based SLA or multi-level SLA. Although typically between companies and third parties, SLAs can also be between departments within a company. Companies equally use internal service-level agreements to avoid misinterpretation and miscommunication between departments.
SLA sets the expectations for both parties involved, specifies both parties’ responsibilities, expectations, and obligations and the parameters for measuring and enforcing the service level, while defining the remedies that will be available to the customer if the service provider does not meet the agreed-upon levels of service. It helps the service providers to ensure that they are meeting the expectations of their customers while also setting reasonable expectations and protection against defaults.
SLAs originated with network service providers and IT-related services but are now widely used in a range of fields, businesses and industries, including the aviation sector.
SLA makes provision for performance assurance, accountability, dispute resolution, possible sanctions for breach and continuous improvement. One of the best practices in SLA management is regular monitoring of performance against agreed-upon metrics. This is where stakeholders in Nigeria’s aviation industry need to up their game.
Where there are SLAs and the principles of operation, monitoring and enforcement are complied with, passengers scheduled to travel by air in the morning from an airport would not waste the bulk part of the day at that airport and eventually travel in the evening. Sometimes, the airline involved fails to communicate any information to the passenger and uncertainty becomes his or her fate.
Where there are SLAs and the principles of operation, monitoring and enforcement are complied with, a contractor would not receive mobilization fee from an organisation to provide a public service and never gets to provide any service. Various aviation agencies would not be owed debts by airlines and other service providers; debts that developed progressively into huge sums despite the service provision from the provider, leaving the service provider organisation to gasp for financial breathe. Airlines would not be indebted to ground handling companies in accumulated volumes, developed overtime.
Where there are SLAs and the principles of operation, monitoring and enforcement are complied with, airlines and passengers would not pay for airports terminal infrastructure services without enjoying the services, and nobody gets sanctioned.
Various departments from the same government agency would not demonstrate confusion over which of them has a duty to carry out a particular segment of pre-aircraft delivery inspection and or process, thereby discouraging and almost frustrating the intending investor, instead of encouraging that investor. Internal Service Level Agreement between departments or directorates would prevent that. A federal government agency does not work for two different employers.
Where there are SLAs and the principles of operation, monitoring and enforcement are complied with, delivery of air navigation equipments that were ordered years ago would not be delayed for so long after paying bulky deposits, to the extent that the current Minister of Aviation & Aerospace Development on assumption of office, mulled the option of forgetting about the deal, as the equipment in question had become obsolete and would be useless even when delivered eventually.
Where there are SLAs and the principles of operation, monitoring and enforcement are complied with, towing service concessionaires at the airports would not be de-marketing the airports through their reckless, rude and unfriendly approach in their relationship with car users at the airports.
The truth is that examples of customer service deficit available in this sector can hardly been exhausted. It is important that both public and private sector service providers and service consumers in Nigeria’s aviation industry, take advantage of the benefits of signing SLAs. Where such SLAs already exist, strict monitoring of implementation should be ensured and sanctions should be meted to parties who breach such SLAs. We believe that if this is done, the level of customer service deficit currently prevalent in the industry would be minimized.AM
