Why Maintenance Agreements Are Good for the Client and the Consultant

When I first embarked on building Sublime Computer Services I had no intentions of using maintenance agreements. My plan was to make our service so good that clients would continue to use us. Oh the naiveté of the good old days. I have discovered good service is not enough. I now understand that there is a level of sustainability that needs to be met for both. A maintenance agreement provides the framework for a good working relationship between clients and the IT consulting firm.

Our focus at Sublime Computer Services is the SMB (Small and Medium Business) market. The SMB market doesn’t typically have full time IT (Information Technology) staff. The SMB market has real IT needs but the needs don’t justify paying someone $50-70K per year to do the work. That is where we come in. There is actually a symbiotic relationship that occurs between our clients and us. We need the client to be successful and make good use of their technology and the client needs us to be successful to continue to support their technology needs. When I was on the other side of the fence I used to think that it was the consultant’s problem to stay in business. To a degree that is true. However it is hard to find good and reliable technical support. When one does find good help, retention is very important. There is a cost of time, effort and money to retraining new IT support. By retaining good IT support the cost of doing business will actually decrease. This is a result of the IT support being able to schedule work rather than putting out fires. Even with good planning there are still fires. A company cannot guess when a server is going to fail. Nor can they guess when a person is going to install a virus on their computer. The full-time availability of the consultant will ensure that when there are fires someone will be available to help. The maintenance agreement ensures that the client will have expert support when they need it and the consultant will stay in business to provide the needed support in a timely manner.

There are also benefits to the client and consultant relationship by defining the relationship. The maintenance agreement defines the things that have been left unspoken. For the client: Is my data held in confidence? When will tech support call back? When will I see tech support? What is this going to cost me each month? When are payments due? What do they actually do? Are my systems really secure? For the consultant: How fast and when do you expect support? How often do I need to visit the client? What services does the client want to pay for? When will I get paid? All of these things are good to know. I expect that all of my clients know that I am keeping all of their data in confidence. Confidentiality of client data is the ethical standard of my profession. However everyone knows what happens when we assume. With all good relationships communication is a must.

Here is the shameless plug: If you are interested in the maintenance agreement or the services of Sublime Computer Services go to www.sublimecomp.com and go to the services tab or download the Maintenance Agreement Brochure at www.sublimecomp.com/images/MaintenanceAgreementBrochure.pdf

Sublime Computer Services, We Make Your Technology Work
Adam Bell
615-942-0850
www.sublimecomp.com
adam@sublimecomp.com