bids&tenders Customer SLA

This Service Level Agreement ("SLA") is incorporated into, and is subject to the terms and conditions of, the Digital Solutions Agreement (“Agreement”) between the Valsoft Corporation inc. dba bids&tenders entity set forth in the Agreement (“bids&tenders”) and the customer entity that is a party to the Agreement (“Customer”). This SLA is used as a tool to measure and guide BIDS&TENDERS and Customer in achieving the goals for effective delivery of all licensed applications, software, hosted data, or other services (the “Product”) to Customer. This SLA applies only to service outages directly related to services provided within the network of BIDS&TENDERS which may include any applicable BIDS&TENDERS vendors (“BIDS&TENDERS Network”).  

The purpose of this SLA is to ensure that the proper elements and commitments are in place to provide consistent service support and delivery to Customer by BIDS&TENDERS. The objective of this SLA is to:  

  • Provide clear reference to service accountability, roles, and/or responsibilities.  
  • Present a clear, concise, and measurable description of service provision to Customer.  
  • Match Customer’s expectations for service provision with actual service support and delivery.  

BIDS&TENDERS will not be liable for any delay or failure to perform any obligation under this Agreement where the delay or failure results from any unforeseen or unavoidable cause reasonably beyond the affected Party’s control (“Force Majeure”). Force Majeure may include, but is not limited to natural events, pandemics, labor or civil disruption, governmental or legislative actions, or orders of any court or agency having jurisdiction of the Party’s actions.  

Definitions 

  1. "Maintenance" means scheduled Unavailability of the Product, as announced by us prior to the Product becoming Unavailable.  
  2. “SLA Exclusions” are situations where the Product is not running or not reachable as a result of (i) a suspension pursuant to the applicable terms and conditions and/or license agreement; (ii) factors outside BIDS&TENDERS’s reasonable control (for example, Force Majeure events or a network or device failure external to BIDS&TENDERS’s network, including at your site or between your site and BIDS&TENDERS’s network); (iii) any actions or inactions of Customer or any third party; (iv) failure of the equipment, software, or other technology of Customer or any third party; or (v) any Maintenance.  
  3. "Unavailable" and "Unavailability" mean when your Product is not running or not reachable due to BIDS&TENDERS or BIDS&TENDERS vendor’s fault, other than due to SLA Exclusions.  

  

Measurement  

Definition  

SLA  

Problem Response Time  

Provision of Customer support.  

Primary coverage will be 8AM EST- 8PM EST, Monday through Friday, with limited support during statutory holidays.  

The table 3 outlines the severity levels and the response times.  

Emergency After Hours Support  

  

In the event of a Severity Level 1 or Severity Level 2 incident outside of the primary coverage hours, please call: 1+866-691-5528 to report the incident by following the prompts and leaving a message which will notify an escalation analyst.    

Calls returned within 15 minutes.  

Problem Resolution  

Provision of any correction for a reproducible error in the Product. Primary support hours for correction will be during Customer’s core business hours (9am-5pm) Monday through Friday, excluding statutory holidays.  

The table 3 outlines the severity levels and the resolution times.  

   

  1. Support Packages  

  

 

Support Package  

Package Details  

Package Description  

 

Standard  

Included with purchase of any Product:   

·         Email and Online Portal   

·         Phone Support 

·         Online Resource Centre  

·         After Hours Priority Phone Support for Severity 1 & 2 Incidents. (See to table 2.3)  

  

Designate 2 individuals who can approve changes to the software.

Access to our online support portal  

·         Create and review your tickets   

·         Update ticket notes

·         Portal URL: https://bidsandtenders.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new  

·         Support email: support@bidsandtenders.ca 

Phone Support  

·         Speak live to support agent during regular business hours  

Online Resource Centre  

·         Access to product knowledge articles, news, release notes:  https://bidsandtenders.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/categories/360002752152-Buyer-Support-Portal-Pro  

  

  1. Priority Levels  

  

Severity Level  

Description  

Standard  

Response Time  

Advanced  

Response Time  

1  

Impact Extensive  

Full Outage. The product is completely down and is not operational, or the operation of a mission critical application is severely impacted by the problem and work cannot reasonably continue.   

E.g., System offline or crash incident occurred, critical business application functions cannot be performed or data loss.  

Immediate action taken to return the product to normal operation state with the highest priority.  

Within 1 hour  

  

Within 1 hour 

2  

Impact Significant  

Failure of Functionality. There is limited use of the product. Some features work, but others do not. The product is subject to periodic interruptions and is considered unstable or performance has degraded. No acceptable work around exists.  

E.g., An impairment to a product where important business functions cannot be used, accessed, or consumed with any level of consistency. Immediate action taken to return product or service to normal operation state with the highest priority.  

Within 3 hours  

Within 2 hours  

3  

Impact Moderate  

Limited or Non-critical failure of functionality. No significant effect on productivity or overall Product usage. This includes issues that have workarounds.  

E.g., A problem that results in a minor or limited loss of service; however, you experience an inconvenience to your business operations.  

All efforts will be made to restore product or service to normal operating state. In the event of a defect requiring software code development to resolve, the problem will be assessed, and resolution timetable communicated to the customer within 7 to 14 business days.  

Within 1  

Business Day  

Within 4 Business hours  

4  

Impact Nominal  

Used for cosmetic issues, small feature requests and all non‑critical or non‑time sensitive issues. There is no impact on the quality, performance, or functionality of the product or service.  

E.g., Service is operational, request to add or configure features, load, or update content.  

  

Within 2  

Business Days  

Within 1 Business Day  
  1. Maintenance  

BIDS&TENDERS periodically adds, repairs, and upgrades the Products and shall use its best efforts to accomplish this without affecting Customer’s access to any Products; however, repairs of an emergency or critical nature may result in the Products not being available for Customer’s usage during the course of such repairs. BIDS&TENDERS reserves the right to suspend access to the Product in order to conduct routine maintenance to both Products and hardware according to the following protocols:  

  

Item  

Description  

Commitment  

Standard Maintenance Window  

During Customer’s non-business hours - between 10PM - 5AM local time  

 BIDS&TENDERS will announce maintenance window 7 days ahead of time that aligns with Customer’s non-business hours  

Scheduled Maintenance  

Routine, scheduled maintenance will be performed inside the maintenance window.  

Customer will be notified through designated point of contact.  

Non-  

Scheduled/Emergency Maintenance  

May be performed outside the maintenance window and will be counted as unscheduled downtime.  

Customer will be notified as soon as commercially reasonable.  

  

  

  1. Contact Support 

  

For the fastest support please submit a ticket through our Incident Portal. For customers subscribed to Advanced Support package; or for Severity 1 and Severity 2 outages, please use our Phone option and follow the prompts.   

  

Incident Portal: https://bidsandtenders.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new  

Email: support@bidsandtenders.ca 

Phone:  1+800-594-4798  

  

  

Escalation Procedures  

BIDS&TENDERS’s escalation procedures are meant to raise the visibility and importance of Customer’s problem internally for any given Product. At the discretion of BIDS&TENDERS, Customer product support issues may be escalated internally to manager of customer support or escalations, please reach out:  

Manager of Customer Support  

Contact: Laura Case

Phone: 519-616-2291

E-mail: ticket-escalation.bids&tendersdigital@bids&tenders.com   

  

If Customer is not satisfied with a response from the product support staff, Customer may request that the issue be escalated by contacting a support representative.