Service Level Agreement

1. Overview

This document forms a Service Level Agreement (“SLA”) between Zynk Software Limited (“Service Provider”)  and its Customers (“The Customer”) for the provision of technical support and other technical services (“Services”) relating to support and to sustain the functionality of the Service Providers software products only where The Customer has entered into a billing agreement which includes these Services with the Service Provider.

The objectives of this SLA are to:

  • Provide clear reference to service ownership, accountability, roles and/or responsibilities.
  • Present a clear, concise and measurable description of service provision to The Customer.
  • Match perceptions of expected service provision with actual service support & delivery.

The Service Provider offers 2 levels of service for Support:

Standard Support – This level of support is included with all The Providers software licenses, once the system is live and running in a production environment, if the system fails, The Customer are responsible for informing The Providers and the team will address the issue and bill for any time taken to fix the problem where the issue was not caused through a fault of the The Providers software.

Priority Support – Priority support is an enhanced support offering. A fixed monthly fee is paid in addition to The Customers license fee for the The Providers team to keep The Customers integration functioning, if something goes wrong, the team will respond to the issue and address the problem.

The priority support comes with an enhanced Service Level Agreement (SLA) whereby any issues reported will be actioned in a shorter time frame compared to standard support customers (Section 6 – Service Requests) and Remote access software is installed on the customer’s server so the providers Technical Support Engineers can pro-actively access servers and resolve issues without customer interaction.

2. Service Scope

The following Services are covered by this SLA:

  • Manned telephone support
  • Monitored email support
  • Remote assistance using Remote Desktop and a Virtual Private Network where available

3. Customer Responsibilities

The Customer’s responsibilities and/or requirements in support of this SLA include:

  • Ensure all requests are logged via an Email or Telephone call to the support desk.
    • The email address for support is [email protected] 
    • The telephone number is 0191 303 7279 (Option 2)
  • Ensure support requests are not sent to individual staff email addresses.
  • Ensure payment for all software licenses and support have been made at the agreed interval.
  • Provide reasonable availability of representative(s) when resolving an incident or request.
  • Ensure regular backups are taken of the program files, scripts and associated data files that are stored on The Customer’s own servers.
  • Ensure all 3rd party hardware and software running the Service Provider’s products are adequately maintained with sufficient disk space, resources and memory.
  • Ensure the integration is running correctly and report any issues as and when they arise.

4. Service Provider Responsibilities

Service Provider responsibilities in support of this SLA include;

  • To provide support for the Service Providers software only.
  • Meeting ticket Service Request response times outlined in section 6
  • Keeping The Customer informed of progress of the ticket for High priority issues
  • Agreeing an investigation procedure with The Customer
  • Providing an approximate timescale for investigation and resolution if possible
  • Providing appropriate notifications to the Customer for any scheduled maintenance. 

5. Service Availability

Coverage parameters specific to the service(s) covered in this SLA are as follows:

Standard Support – 09:00 – 17:00 GMT  Monday – Friday (Excluding bank holidays)

Priority Support – 09:00 – 22:00 GMT  Monday – Friday (Excluding bank holidays)

5.1 Out Of Hours

The Service Provider will not provide an out of hours support service and any calls or emails received outside normal working hours will go to an answering service and a ticket will automatically be raised in our support desk.

No action is guaranteed until the next working day and within the SLA. If you require out of hours support service this can be arranged as part of a Priority support package.

6. Service Requests

In support of services outlined in this SLA, the Service Provider guarantees to respond to service related incidents and/or requests submitted by The Customer within the following time frames:

  • Standard Support – 5 Working Days
  • Priority Support – 1 Working Day 

Remote desktop assistance may be provided if our technician deems it necessary and in-line with the priority of the support request. Please note that due to the nature of integration between multiple IT systems it is not possible to offer a guaranteed resolution time.

6.1 Classification Of Service Requests

We will classify the severity of a service request based on the following criteria 

High Priority 
  • Loss of business e.g. Orders not being downloaded, Product Prices not being updated
  • System Down – The Providers systems or servers are down or not responding
  • Data corruption – Data is being synchronized but is causing corruption that will require a manual intervention by The Customer to correct
  • Staffing – Issue is causing a critical problem in business e.g. Production has stopped / Staff are unable to work due to the issue.
  • Power outage – A power outage that has caused a catastrophic failure of the integration
Medium Priority
  • Data issues – data transfer issues that are not immediately affecting business and the software is still operational.
  • 3rd party Breaking changes – Changes in a third party system or platform which cause breaking changes requiring an amendment to a workflow.
Low Priority
  • Requests for Change, Additions or Changes – any amendments or modifications to an existing workflow
  • Installing Software – Scheduled installation of Service Providers software on a new or existing server
  • Minor changes – Simple requests such as changing the scheduled run time of a workflow

6.2 Billable Service Requests

The following service requests are chargeable at the appropriate billable rate depending on the time of day the work needs to be completed.

  • Installation or reinstallation of the Service Providers software and restoring Workflows / Scripts and databases on a new or an existing server software due to an upgrade or hardware failure. † 
  • 3rd party breaking changes – if the Customer or a 3rd party system (e.g. Ecommerce site) has been changed or upgraded resulting in a breaking change that requires the Service Provider to make amendments to a workflow, or to correct or amend data that has been corrupted as a result of a change. † 
  • Other Failures – Flooding, Power outages or other catastrophic failures that are outside the control of the Service Provider. †
  • Request for Change Additions, changes or modifications to an existing workflow e.g. adding new or amending existing functionality.

6.3 Working Hours

  • UK Standard Hours 09:00 – 17:00 GMT Monday to Friday (Excludes UK Bank Holidays) 
  • UK Extended Hours 17:00 – 22:00 GMT Monday to Friday (Excludes UK Bank Holidays) 
  • US Standard Hours 09:00 – 17:00 ET Monday to Friday (Excludes UK Bank Holidays) 

6.4 Billable Rates

  • UK Standard Hours – £125 per hour
  • UK Extended Hours – £185 per hour
  • US Standard Hours – $175 per hour
  • Any work completed outside of these hours will be charged at £250 / $350 per hour

7. Troubleshooting

In order to provide a rapid resolution to issues the The Providers team will require as much detail as possible when a ticket is sent. The following areas should be checked and our team informed of any changes that you are immediately aware of.

7.1 Environment

  • Has any integrated software been re-installed, upgraded or changed?
  • Have any on-site servers been upgraded, restored or recently patched?
  • Have any remote or cloud based servers been upgraded, restored or recently patched?
  • Have any File permissions been changed or modified in any way?
  • Are all security certificates in date and not expired?

7.2 Data

  • Check permissions on data feeds
  • Check for invalid or incorrect data being fed from source into The Providers software e.g. corruption
  • Check the data feed validates (Internet Explorer can validate an XML data feeds)
  • Bugs introduced to any integration scripts that are supplying or feeding data to/from the Service Providers software

7.3 Memory 

  • Large data sets (>100k records ) can cause memory issues with on-premise servers when posting / uploading data to a remote system in one batch and they should be uploaded using data paging. These problems are usually identified in the initial stages of an integration, however there are instances when data sizes can increase dramatically, such as when a customer has imported a large amount of data to their system manually

† This does not apply to Customers who have taken a Priority Service Level agreement. Please note that Requests for Change (RFC) are billable under a priority support contract.

Any prices quoted are exclusive of UK VAT which will be charged where applicable.