Managed Services

Operated for you. SLA-bounded. Recurring. The structure when the architecture is stable, the work shifts from building to operating, and authors and downstream consumers can't wait when something breaks.

What Managed Services actually means.

Managed Services engagements run against a Service Level Agreement — a document that names what's operated, when it's covered, what response and resolution targets apply by severity, and what the recurring monthly fee is. The SLA is the load-bearing contractual mechanism. Service Credits — financial penalties when targets are missed, capped at a percentage of monthly fee — are the enforcement mechanism. Auto-renewal is the default; termination is the optional event.

This is the engagement model where you're not buying a deliverable or a body of hours. You're contracting for an operational function — the CCMS administered, the publishing pipeline run, the schema governed, the Tier 2/3 escalations handled. The relationship compounds over quarters and years rather than wrapping at an acceptance gate or a term-end decision point. Most clients enter Managed Services after a Project-Based engagement has built the thing being operated; the model formalizes the ongoing work that follows the build.

Extense carries performance risk against the SLA — response and resolution times, ticket volume handled, service availability against agreed coverage. Service Credits land as invoice deductions when targets are missed. The Client carries change risk — scope evolves, content models drift, new capabilities get requested. Those flow through T&M change requests under the SLA's out-of-scope clause, separate from the recurring fee. The structure protects both sides from drift: the recurring fee covers the agreed scope at the agreed reliability; new work is priced separately.

Managed Services is the right shape when the architecture has stabilized, the work has shifted from building to operating, and someone has to be accountable for keeping it running. It's the wrong shape for one-off work (Project-Based handles that with a finite SOW), for exploratory or evolving scope (Staff Augmentation carries that uncertainty better), or for work the Client's team should genuinely own — operational dependence on a vendor isn't a feature for everyone.

The document.

A fuller version of the procurement instrument introduced on the Services overview. 5 pages, organized the way a procurement reader actually moves through an Extense Service Level Agreement — section by section.

Excerpt · SLA v4.0 · 5 pages

Service Level Agreement · MSA-XXXX-XXXX

Service Level Agreement

The operational instrument for ongoing services.

Page 1 / 5 — Services & Coverage

  • Services in Scope Named operational functions covered by the SLA. Example: CCMS administration · Publishing pipeline operation · Schema governance · Tier 2/3 author support · Content-model evolution support. Each service named with the systems and standards it covers.
  • Coverage When the services are operated. Typical patterns: Business days 8am–6pm ET (most engagements); 12×5 with after-hours on-call for Sev 1 (regulated-industry engagements); 24×7 (mission-critical defense and aerospace). Holiday calendar named in the SLA.

Page 2 / 5 — SLA Targets

  • Response Targets Time from ticket open to acknowledged engagement, by severity. Typical SLA: Sev 1 < 1 hr · Sev 2 < 4 hrs · Sev 3 < 1 business day · Sev 4 < 5 business days. Severity definitions named in the SLA — Sev 1 is production-down or compliance-impacting.
  • Resolution Targets Time from acknowledged engagement to issue resolved or workaround in place. Softer than response targets. Typical: Sev 1 < 4 hrs (workaround) · Sev 2 < 1 business day · Sev 3 < 5 business days · Sev 4 best-effort within the quarter.

Page 3 / 5 — Term & Fee

  • Term 12-month initial term standard. Auto-renews annually unless either party provides 60 days notice prior to renewal. No automatic price increases without separate notice.
  • Fee Recurring monthly fee. Typical range: $15K–$60K monthly for single-system administration; $40K–$150K monthly for multi-system or 24×7 coverage. Annual scope review included; mid-term scope adjustments via amendment.

Page 4 / 5 — Credits & Reporting

  • Service Credits Financial penalty for missed SLA targets. Typical structure: 5% of monthly fee per Sev 1 miss; 2% per Sev 2 miss; capped at 25% of monthly fee per quarter. Credits applied to the following month's invoice. Sustained pattern of misses (3+ consecutive months) triggers SLA review and potential right-to-cancel.
  • Reporting Monthly service report covering ticket volume by severity, SLA attainment percentages, recurring issues with root-cause analysis, and recommendations. Quarterly business review with the Client lead — scope, performance, evolution opportunities.

Page 5 / 5 — Out-of-Scope & Exit

  • Out-of-Scope Work New capabilities, scope expansion, or work outside the named services run as T&M change requests at a published rate, or as a separate Project SOW for larger bodies of work. Out-of-scope work doesn't displace SLA-covered work; capacity is named in the SLA.
  • Termination & Transition For convenience by either party with 60 days written notice. For cause with 30-day cure period. Transition support — runbook handover, knowledge transfer to incoming team, data export — included for up to 90 days post-termination at agreed transition rate. The SLA's exit-plan clause names the transition deliverables.
1 / 5

How it runs.

  1. 01

    Transition-in (Months 1–3 typically)

    Take-over from in-house team or prior vendor. Knowledge transfer, runbook ingestion, ticket-system access, monitoring instrumentation. SLA targets ramp during transition (tighter targets apply once steady-state is reached). Joint operations during transition; Extense leads at transition end.

  2. 02

    Steady-state operations (continuous, monthly rhythm)

    The recurring engagement. Tickets handled against SLA targets. Monthly service report delivered. Service Credits applied to invoice if SLA missed. This phase loops continuously — months and years — without a natural endpoint.

  3. 03

    Quarterly business review

    Standing meeting with Client lead. Scope, performance, evolving needs, SLA appropriateness, recommendations. Out-of-scope work surfaced and scoped here. SLA amendments proposed if reality has drifted from the original agreement.

  4. 04

    Annual renewal cycle

    60 days before renewal anniversary, both sides confirm continuation, renegotiate scope or fee if appropriate, and re-execute or amend the SLA. Most renewals are mechanical; substantive renegotiations happen at this gate.

  5. 05

    Transition-out (only if terminated)

    Named in the SLA's exit-plan clause. Runbook handover, knowledge transfer to incoming team or in-house staff, data export. Up to 90 days at agreed transition rate. Engagement formally closed once transition deliverables are accepted.

What’s in scope, what’s out.

Out-of-scope items are typical defaults. Exact inclusions and exclusions are named in the SOW for each engagement.

Status Item Notes
In Named operational functions in the SLA's Services in Scope clause Every covered service explicitly listed and bounded — administration, governance, support, pipeline operations.
In Coverage during agreed hours and severity response/resolution within SLA targets What the recurring fee actually buys: predictable response and resolution against named targets.
In Monthly service reporting and quarterly business reviews Standard reporting cadence — ticket volume, SLA attainment, recurring issues, evolution recommendations.
In Service Credits for missed SLA targets Financial penalty applied to the following month's invoice when response or resolution targets are missed, per the SLA's credit schedule.
In Transition support up to 90 days post-termination Per the exit-plan clause — runbook handover, knowledge transfer, data export — at the agreed transition rate.
Out New capabilities or scope expansion Handled as T&M change requests at a published rate, or as a separate Project SOW for larger bodies of work. Doesn't displace SLA-covered capacity.
Out Coverage outside the agreed hours Off-cycle escalations may be handled but bill as out-of-scope work. Persistent off-cycle needs signal a coverage-pattern change should be negotiated.
Out Work the Client's team is contractually responsible for Content authoring decisions, business-process changes, and other Client-owned domains stay with the Client.
Out Architecture redesign or migration work Substantive architecture changes are a separate Project engagement, not absorbed into the recurring SLA fee.
Out Indefinite root-cause investigation in Client-controlled systems When the root cause sits in systems the Client owns and operates, investigation effort beyond initial diagnosis is bounded by the SLA's scope clause.

When you’d pick this.

  1. “We don't have the staff to operate this in-house.”

    CCMS administration, schema governance, publishing-pipeline operations — these are operational functions, not projects. Hiring for them is hard; running them through SLA is straightforward and the quality bar is contractually defined.

  2. “We need SLA on publishing — authors can't wait when something breaks.”

    When the pipeline is critical-path for authors and content shipping is on a daily or weekly cadence, response-time targets are the right contractual mechanism. The recurring fee buys predictability of response, not just availability of help.

  3. “We want to focus on authoring, not the engineering layer underneath.”

    The CCMS, the publishing automation, the schema enforcement, the metadata governance — these are infrastructure for the authors. Managed Services keeps the infrastructure invisible to the authors and accountable to the Client lead through monthly reports and quarterly reviews.

  4. “The architecture is stable. We need someone to keep it running.”

    After the build is done, the work shifts to operating, evolving, and supporting. That's a different commercial structure than the project that built it. Many engagements transition naturally — Project-Based built the system, Managed Services runs it.

When this is the wrong choice.

ANTI-PATTERN

Managed Services for one-off work.

When the work is a defined deliverable with an endpoint — a migration, an IA refactor, a new pipeline build — Managed Services overcommits both sides. The recurring fee structure assumes ongoing operations; one-off work belongs in a Project SOW with a clean acceptance gate and a finite term.

ANTI-PATTERN

Managed Services without a stable architecture.

When the architecture is still being designed or migrated, Managed Services creates SLA fights. Every issue becomes a debate: is this a new bug to fix under the SLA, or a design defect that should have been caught in the build? The architecture has to be stable enough that what's being operated is well-defined; otherwise the SLA can't function.

ANTI-PATTERN

Managed Services for work the Client should own.

Operational dependence on a vendor isn't a feature for everyone. If the Client's team has the capacity and is willing to own the operations, Managed Services creates an avoidable dependency. The right move is sometimes to use Staff Augmentation to teach the Client's team how to operate the system, then transition to fully in-house.

Recent engagements.

  1. A medical-device company's CCMS administration after the build closed.

    3-year SLA following the Project-Based CCMS implementation. Business-hours coverage, Sev 1 response < 1 hr, schema governance and Tier 2/3 author support included. Annual scope reviews handled content-model evolution as new device families came on line. Quarterly business reviews surfaced two T&M change requests in year two for additional regulatory profiles.

  2. A defense contractor's S1000D publishing-pipeline operations.

    Multi-year managed services for a defense-delivery publishing pipeline. 12×5 coverage with after-hours on-call for delivery cycles. Sev 1 response < 30 min — tighter than typical because pipeline downtime stops contractually-bound delivery. Annual SLA reviews included a renegotiation in year three to add a second pipeline brought online by a new program.

Anonymized for client confidentiality. Specific scope, contract details, and named outcomes available under appropriate NDA channels.

Related

Sample Content Assessment

Tell us what you need operated, at what reliability target, and across what coverage hours. We'll return a representative Service Level Agreement with response targets, monthly fee structure, Service Credits clause, and a transition-in plan within five business days. No obligation to proceed.

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