Pick the 6–8 fields that actually stop work
Start by listing the fields that, if wrong or late, cause the most rework or missed actions — not every field you have. Think in terms of decisions: does the sales team need contact phone and owner to call a lead? Does finance need invoice date and amount to reconcile? Limit the list to six to eight items so the SLA is quick to check and enforce.
Examples: HubSpot contact fields — email, phone, contact owner, lifecycle stage; Xero invoicing — invoice number, invoice date, amount, payment status; Shared spreadsheet (order tracker) — order ID, customer name, delivery date, status. Keep each field tied to a clear decision or action so ownership is obvious.
Set maximum acceptable delay and a simple error rate
Give each field a maximum acceptable age before it’s considered stale. Use round, practical thresholds: critical lead fields — 4 hours; sales follow-up fields — same business day; finance fields for invoicing — 1 business day; lower‑priority fields — 48 hours. Record the threshold next to each field in the SLA.
Define an acceptable error rate to avoid perfectionism: required fields ≤1–2% bad values; optional but important fields ≤3–5%. If the rate is higher, the SLA triggers remedial steps (cleaning, training, or a simple stop on automated processing). Keep the math rough — if your sample of 100 records shows more than the allowed errors, treat it as a problem.
Allow and record exceptions. Typical exceptions are manual overrides, bulk imports in progress, or known ongoing migrations; each exception needs an owner, an expiry date and a short reason. That keeps the SLA useful instead of bureaucratic.
Two low‑friction checks and a 15‑minute weekly review
Daily quick‑check: a 5–10 minute run by the SLA owner. Open the system(s) and spot‑check 10 recent records against the six‑eight fields: are they present, owned, and within the acceptable age? Note any obvious spikes in missing data and raise a short alert if you hit the error-rate threshold.
Weekly dashboard and alert templates: keep one row per field with columns for owner, max age, allowed error rate and current week error rate. If a field breaches its rule, send a short alert: “SLA alert — HubSpot email missing on 6/30 new leads. Owner: Sam. Action: pause lead workflow until fixed.” Use plain language and one-sentence actions so the recipient can act fast.
15‑minute SLA review meeting: 1) quick headline numbers (OK / at risk / breach); 2) one root cause for any breach; 3) immediate action and owner for the week; 4) record any exceptions and expiry. Keep notes in the same shared place as the SLA so history is visible and the meeting stays focused.
If you want a ready one‑page SLA template or a short checklist to run these checks in HubSpot, Xero or a spreadsheet, Optira can share a practical starter — use it and adapt the thresholds to how your team actually works.