When negotiating a SaaS SLA (Software As A Service Service Level Agreement), CIOs and CMOs often fail to consider the integrations between SaaS and on-premise applications, such as ERP, stock management or order fulfilment. The business logic and data required for these integrations are crucial aspects of the SaaS model.

Failing to ensure the integrity of these integrations can lead to several service degradations, including:

• Consumer dissatisfaction, leading to revenue loss through service credits and lost sales
• Delayed or incomplete product deliveries
• Negative publicity on social media
• Inaccurate stock levels, leading to an inability to fulfil orders
• Revenue loss due to technical capacity shortages, especially during traffic spikes, where even if the core capabilities can handle the demand, integration failures can negatively impact the consumer experience
• Time-consuming incident resolution

SaaS integrations are often treated as mere technical tasks rather than being designed as part of the service. This approach often neglects crucial factors such as:

• Product & Market strategy
• Service design
• Pricing strategy
• SLA
• Technical architecture

A comprehensive Integration SLA should encompass the following elements:

• Product strategy
• Market strategy
• Detailed SLA for each class of integration, including monitoring – Integrations should be viewed as transactional information
• Pricing strategy

It is essential to recognise that no service provider operates in isolation. Understanding the operating ecosystem is crucial for designing services and catalogues and structuring the SLA.

Listing integrations with their associated service levels in the SLA helps structure the relationship between the customer and the service provider.