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What do your
support contracts cover?
At Computer
Veterans we provide support on
anything that you would expect to see on a typical network. Specific
areas that we cover include servers, workstations, operating systems and
applications, printers, routers, switches, hubs, network infrastructure,
Internet connections, firewalls… basically if anything goes wrong on
your network, we would be your first point of contact. |
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What operating systems and applications do you
cover? |
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We
cover all Microsoft operating systems and applications, all versions of
Novell, and Linux systems and most other major applications. |
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We have a specialist application written by a
third party. Would you cover that? |
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A lot of our
customers have specialist applications that are written and supported by
another supplier. We usually work with the supplier to make sure that
their application is happy, and to resolve problems if they arise. We
accelerate the process of fixing problems by giving the supplier
detailed information about the problem, and by helping them to implement
a fix safely and quickly. |
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Do you provide hardware maintenance? |
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No. If we investigate a problem that turns out to be caused by faulty
hardware, we will work with you and your hardware supplier to order
replacement parts and install them for you, but we do not supply the
parts themselves. This is because hardware suppliers are much better
placed to provide spares and replacement parts, and they can provide
hardware maintenance far more cheaply than we could. Most companies
these days buy hardware with 3-year warranties, so it’s already covered. |
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So you don’t sell hardware? |
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We
can supply any hardware, software or licenses you require. But if you
prefer to buy your hardware from somewhere else, that’s OK too. |
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What’s your
typical support customer like? |
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We have an enormous range of different customers across all industry
sectors. Our smallest support customer has only ten employees, and our
biggest has over Five Hundred. The difference is that for smaller
customers we tend to look after everything, where as with larger
customers we tend to support specific systems, provide additional
support to existing support teams, or provide specialist skills. |
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How do you charge for network support? |
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We
charge a basic monthly fee which entitles you to a certain number of
hours of support or consultancy per month. If you need more support than
your contract provides, we are happy to provide it for an additional
hourly charge. |
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Why do you charge a monthly fee? |
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Providing
effective network support requires that we know your systems inside out.
We need to keep detailed records of how everything is configured so that
we can respond quickly and safely when you have a problem. We have
remote monitoring systems that can warn us in advance of problems before
they become critical. And of course we have to provide sufficient
resources so that we always have someone available to deal with your
call. All of this costs us money, whether or not you have a problem at
any given time. We try to keep the monthly fee as low as we can without
sacrificing quality or responsiveness. |
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Are you expensive then? |
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We –
and presumably our existing support customers – don’t think so. There
are network support providers that charge less than we do, and those
that charge an awful lot more. We are positioned at the very top of the
market in terms of quality, and around half way up in terms of cost.
Sometimes we carry out work on behalf of other support providers whose
rates are two or three times as high as our own, for the same people
doing the same work. We’re certainly a lot cheaper than lost data or a
day spent without a working computer system. We have come across systems
that were so vulnerable the entire business was hanging by a thread.
What price would you put on your business? |
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What if I don’t have any budget for network
support? |
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It’s
simply unrealistic to expect your IT systems to run forever without
having any problems, and since they are a crucial business asset it’s
equally unrealistic not to have them adequately covered. Think of the
monthly charge as being insurance for one of your organization's most
valuable assets. |
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How quickly can you respond to problems? |
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Depending on the
type of support contract you take out with us, we guarantee emergency
response times as low as fifteen minutes. Note that these are
contractual response times and so represent worst-case scenarios; we
normally respond instantly to emergencies. |
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How do you respond to problems? |
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We
set up remote links to all of our customers’ sites, either using through
a VPN or using ISDN. This allows us to take control of servers and other
critical network components within seconds, so that we can respond to
problems immediately. A lot of problems can be fixed within minutes, but
if we cannot resolve a problem remotely we will go onsite. We aim to be
onsite within 4 hours of identifying a problem that cannot be fixed
remotely, but it’s usually a lot quicker than that. |
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What’s different about you? |
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No
gray areas, no finger-pointing, and a pragmatic approach to
problem-solving. We see many customers who have been suffering with some
sort of problem for months because the hardware supplier says it's a
software problem, and the software vendor says it's a hardware problem.
We don't operate like that. In most cases our customers don't especially
care where the problem lies; they just need it fixed. We operate on a
"fix it first; discuss it later" basis and we try to avoid gray areas
and finger-pointing at all costs. |
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What else is different about you? |
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Over
the years we have built up a good understanding of our customers, and
what they want from a support provider. The things they want are honest
objective advice, reliability, effectiveness, value for money and
accountability. These attributes are getting rarer in today's
cut-throat, short-term profit obsessed climate - and that's what makes
us different. We still believe in the old principles of looking after
customers, and building long term relationships. |
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Anything else? |
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We
have a very unusual mix of clients, from the very small to the very
large. This allows us to tailor the advice and services we provide to
each client’s budget, and (just as importantly) to adapt as they grow
and as their priorities change. We gain a lot of clients who have grown
rapidly and whose existing support providers either couldn’t keep pace
with them, or else didn’t have the skills that larger companies need.
Our unique client mix also enables us to provide smaller companies with
expertise we have gained from larger ones, especially in areas (such as
security) which tend to get overlooked by companies below a certain
size. |
