Why you shouldn’t be charged for Maintenance, Monitoring and Monthly Reporting.
Every computer system needs to be maintained and monitored. Every company needs to be able to view reports on their systems, so they can plan for the future that’s a given.
Traditional IT support providers will tell you this is all very complicated, technical and requires their engineering personnel’s time, so in every IT service agreement there’s a charge for what’s commonly referred to as “monthly maintenance”.
Sounds reasonable and it once was, but we don’t believe it is anymore and here’s why.
With the advancements in ITSM (Information Technology Systems Management) tools over the past years within our industry, these necessary tasks can all be automated. In fact the industry leading tools such as Kaseya are so advanced that ongoing maintenance is carried out in real time as required on an individual server and workstation needs basis. Not once a month, one size fits all process conducted by an engineer coming on site and running through some antiquated checklist of tasks on every device!
These commercial ITSM tools have a monthly licensing cost that IT support companies pay, they aren’t free. However these tools do so much more in relation to facilitating actual support functions that the overall cost in relation to the massive benefits the automated maintenance procedures provide is negligible.
Which raised a obvious question in our mind , “if IT support providers DON’T actually have a labour cost involved why are they all still charging their clients as if they if they do?
The most logical reasons are,
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- They haven’t invested in commercial ITSM tools so they actually still perform the necessary maintenance tasks the old fashion way (manually) once a month.
or
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- They have invested so now it’s easy money, because their clients are accustomed to paying for these services.
Whatever their reasons, it’s unfair, antiquated and goes against everything we believe.
So if you believe, what we believe,
Don’t continue to pay for something that should be free.
Added Benefit – If your current provider hasn’t invested in commercial ITSM tools then the maintenance, monitoring and reporting we provide Free will be far superior as it’s
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- Performed in real-time on an individual needs basis to manufacturers best practice.
- More comprehensive, reliable and accurate than any human could ever be.
- Can’t be postponed, forgotten or worse skipped because of more pressing tasks.
- Reporting is fully interactive so you / we can drill into great detail as required.
- Monitoring 40+ services within the network, not only alerts us to potential problems, or actual failures, it provides the fix in many cases leading to faster response and rectification times.
The Bottom line – Professional IT providers invest in ITSM tools.
If your provider has invested in these tools, then your maintenance is best practice, but you shouldn’t be paying any monthly maintenance fee. If they aren’t using these tools, then not only are paying for something that should be free, you are receiving an inferror result.
