1. Parties
This Service Level Agreement ("SLA") sets out the availability and support commitments provided by Seed Software Technologies (Pty) Ltd ("Seed") to any Customer accessing the Service under an executed Agreement.
2. Scope
2.1 This Service Level Agreement ("SLA") sets out Seed's availability commitment, support commitments and the remedies available where Seed does not meet them.
2.2 This SLA serves as Attachment 1 to the Seed Founding Partner Agreement (South Africa), and forms part of the agreement under which the customer accesses the Service.
2.3 This SLA applies to paid subscriptions. It does not apply to trial accounts, sandbox environments or beta features labelled as such in the Service.
2.4 This SLA also incorporates by reference the Seed Data Processing Addendum ("DPA"). By signing this SLA, the Customer agrees to the terms of the DPA, and no separate signature is required for the DPA to take effect.
3. Availability commitment
3.1 Seed will use commercially reasonable efforts to make the Service available at least 99.5% of the time in each calendar month.
3.2 Monthly availability is calculated as: (total minutes in the month, less excluded minutes, less unplanned downtime minutes) divided by (total minutes in the month, less excluded minutes), expressed as a percentage.
3.3 "Unplanned downtime" means any period in which the Service is not accessible to the customer's Users, as measured by Seed's external monitoring, excluding the events in clause 5.
3.4 At 99.5%, the permitted unplanned downtime is approximately 3 hours 39 minutes in a 30-day month.
4. Planned maintenance
4.1 Seed carries out planned maintenance where practicable outside support hours and, where practicable, over weekends.
4.2 Seed gives at least 48 hours' notice, by in-app notice and by email to the customer's administrator, of any planned maintenance expected to cause downtime.
4.3 Planned maintenance carried out with the required notice does not count as unplanned downtime.
4.4 Seed may carry out emergency maintenance without notice where necessary to preserve the security or integrity of the Service. Seed will notify affected customers as soon as practicable, and will explain what happened within 5 business days.
4.5 Seed aims to keep total planned maintenance downtime below 4 hours per calendar month.
5. Exclusions
Availability is not affected by, and no service credit is payable for, downtime caused by:
5.1 planned or emergency maintenance carried out in accordance with clause 4;
5.2 a fault in the customer's own equipment, network, browser or internet connection;
5.3 failure or degradation of a third-party service outside Seed's reasonable control, including the customer's identity provider or email provider, save that Seed remains responsible for its own hosting and sub-processor arrangements;
5.4 the customer's breach of the agreement or the Acceptable Use Policy, or the customer's misconfiguration of the Service;
5.5 suspension of the Service in accordance with the agreement, including for non-payment;
5.6 a denial-of-service or comparable attack, provided Seed has taken reasonable protective measures; or
5.7 an event beyond Seed's reasonable control as contemplated in the force majeure clause of the agreement.
6. Support
6.1 Support channels are:
6.2 email to support@seedtalent.co.za;
6.3 in-app support within the Service; and
6.4 for customers on a signed Seed Founding Partner Agreement (South Africa), a named contact at Seed as stated in the Order Form.
6.5 Support hours are 08:00 to 17:00 South African Standard Time, Monday to Friday, excluding South African public holidays.
6.6 Requests received outside support hours are treated as received at the start of the next support hours period.
7. Severity levels and response targets
7.1 Seed classifies each request on receipt. A customer may request reclassification, and Seed will not unreasonably refuse.
| Severity | Definition | Target first response | Target workaround or resolution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Critical | The Service is unavailable, or a core workflow is unusable, for all of the customer's Users. No workaround exists. | 4 business hours | Within 2 business days |
| High | A core workflow is degraded or unusable for some Users, or data integrity is at risk. No reasonable workaround. | Next business day | Within 5 business days |
| Standard | A non-core function is impaired, or a reasonable workaround exists. | 2 business days | Within 10 business days |
| Request | Configuration help, training questions, feature requests, general queries. | 2 business days | No commitment |
7.2 "First response" means a substantive human reply acknowledging the issue and stating what Seed is doing, not an automated receipt.
7.3 Response and resolution targets are targets, not guarantees, except where a service credit is expressly stated in clause 8.
7.4 For a Critical issue, Seed will provide progress updates at least daily until a workaround or resolution is in place.
8. Service credits
8.1 Where monthly availability falls below the commitment in clause 3.1, the customer may claim a service credit as follows:
| Monthly availability | Service credit |
|---|---|
| Below 99.5% but at or above 99.0% | 5% of that month's fees |
| Below 99.0% but at or above 98.0% | 10% of that month's fees |
| Below 98.0% but at or above 95.0% | 20% of that month's fees |
| Below 95.0% | 30% of that month's fees |
8.2 To claim, the customer must submit a written request to support@seedtalent.co.za within 30 days of the end of the affected month, identifying the dates and approximate times of the downtime.
8.3 Seed will respond to a claim within 10 business days. Where the claim is accepted, the credit is applied against the customer's next invoice. Credits are not paid in cash.
8.4 Total service credits in any calendar month may not exceed 30% of that month's fees.
8.5 Service credits are the customer's sole and exclusive financial remedy for a failure to meet the availability commitment, except where the agreement's termination rights apply.
8.6 Where availability falls below 95.0% in two consecutive months, or in three months in any rolling twelve-month period, the customer may terminate the agreement on 30 days' written notice without penalty, with a pro-rata refund of prepaid fees.
8.7 To exercise this termination right, the customer must provide written notice via email to support@seedtalent.co.za. Notice must be received by Seed at least 48 hours before the commencement of the customer's next billing cycle to be effective for that cycle.
8.8 Seed takes automated backups of production data at least daily, retained for at least 30 days.
8.9 Seed's recovery point objective is 24 hours. Seed's recovery time objective is 8 hours.
8.10 Seed tests its restore process at least twice a year and will confirm on request that a test has been carried out.
8.11 Backups are a disaster-recovery measure. They are not a substitute for the customer's own exports. Seed will assist with recovery of customer-deleted records on a reasonable-efforts basis where the request is made within 30 days.
9. Data Processing
9.1 In respect of Customer Personal Data, the Customer is the responsible party under POPIA and, where applicable, the controller under the EU GDPR or UK GDPR. Seed is the operator and, where applicable, the processor. Seed processes Customer Personal Data only to provide, secure and support the Service, and only on the Customer's documented instructions.
10. Security incidents
10.1 Where Seed becomes aware of a security compromise affecting customer data, Seed will notify affected customers without undue delay and in any event within 72 hours.
10.2 The notification will describe, so far as known, what happened, what data was affected, what Seed is doing, and what the customer should do.
10.3 Seed will provide a written incident report within 10 business days of the incident being contained.
10.4 Reporting obligations to the Information Regulator and to data subjects are dealt with in the Data Processing Addendum.
11. Changes to this SLA
11.1 Seed may amend this SLA. Where an amendment reduces a commitment, Seed will give at least 30 days' notice by email to customer administrators and by in-app notice.
11.2 For customers on a signed Seed Founding Partner Agreement (South Africa), a reduction in commitment during the Initial Term takes effect only with the customer's written agreement.
12. Annex 1: Details of Processing
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Subject matter | Provision of the Seed recruitment CRM platform |
| Duration | The term of the Agreement, plus the retention periods in clause 10 |
| Nature and purpose | Hosting, storage, organisation, retrieval, structuring, automated screening and scoring, generation of outreach drafts, publication of job advertisements to the Customer's public job board, reporting, backup, and support |
| Categories of Data Subject | Candidates and applicants; the Customer's client contacts; the Customer's own Users; referees where the Customer records them |
| Categories of personal data | Name, contact details, address, date of birth where supplied, nationality and right to work information where supplied, curriculum vitae and its contents, employment history, education and qualifications, skills, salary expectations and current remuneration, notice period, interview notes and feedback, screening and scoring outputs, correspondence, placement and commission records, and identifiers created by the Service |
| Special personal data | Not required by the Service. May be present where the Customer chooses to record it, for example equity or demographic information collected for employment equity reporting, or accommodation requirements. The Customer is responsible for its lawful basis and for limiting what it records. |
| Frequency of transfer | Continuous, for the duration of the Agreement |
| Data exporter | The Customer, as identified in the Agreement |
| Data importer | Seed Software Technologies (Pty) Ltd, 24 Viognier Avenue, Aan de Wijnlanden, Stellenbosch, Western Cape, 7600, South Africa, contact info@seedtalent.co.za |
| Competent supervisory authority | Determined under Clause 13 of the SCCs by the Customer's place of establishment or its EU representative |
13. Annex 2: Technical and Organisational Measures
Seed maintains at least the following.
| Area | Measure |
|---|---|
| Encryption in transit | TLS 1.2 or higher on all connections to the Service |
| Encryption at rest | Database and object storage encrypted at rest by the hosting provider |
| Tenant isolation | Row-level security enforced at the database layer so a User can access only their own organisation's records |
| Access control | Role-based access within the Service; least-privilege access to production; multi-factor authentication required for all Seed personnel with production access |
| Authentication | Password policy, credential hashing, session expiry, and multi-factor authentication available to customers |
| Logging | Application and access logs retained for 12 months; audit trail of record changes available to Customer administrators |
| Backups | Automated backups at least daily, retained at least 30 days, with restore testing at least twice a year |
| Change management | Version control, peer review of changes to production code, and staged deployment |
| Vulnerability management | Dependency scanning, and remediation of critical vulnerabilities within 14 days of a fix being available |
| Penetration testing | Annual third-party test, with a summary available to customers under confidentiality |
| Personnel | Written confidentiality undertakings, background checks where lawful and proportionate, and role-appropriate security training |
| Sub-processor management | Written data processing terms with every Sub-processor, and periodic review |
| Physical security | Delegated to the hosting provider's certified data centres; Seed operates no data centre of its own |
| Business continuity | Documented incident response and recovery procedures, with a recovery point objective of 24 hours and a recovery time objective of 8 hours |
14. Status and reporting
On request, Seed will provide a customer with its monthly availability figure within 10 business days of the end of a month.