MAINTENANCE & SUPPORT
For Vendors
A maintenance and support operation should be a profit center, not a drain on a company’s operation. Providing maintenance and support services are not to be avoided or palmed off to a professional service provider. SM&R will help create well crafted Maintenance and Support Agreements that will help provide a positive and steady cash flow. A Maintenance and Support Agreement can also be used to help maintain and assure long term client relationships and to bring purchasers back when they need to upgrade.
The means of successfully providing these services are as varied as the types the software, the types of business operations and geographical issues involved in providing maintenance. The key is the knowledge, years of experience and imagination of SM&R’s attorneys, who provide the Maintenance and Support Agreement which benefits Vendor, while assuring it provides protection from aggressive users.
In all areas of the law, including IT practice, SM&R attorneys do not tell clients what to do. Rather, they explain the issues and guide the clients in a manner that allows a vendor to make well reasoned decisions. At SM&R, we believe that the client will always know more about his, her or its business operations than the attorney. The decisions, while explained and guided by SM&R, are best made by the client. This can only be done if the issues are clearly explained.
The types of issues which are discussed with client include:
- What services the vendor will and will not supply,
- What parts of Users system is covered under the Agreement and what is not covered,
- What the Vendor will charge for services beyond those covered by the agreement,
- The extent and nature of the client’s obligations under the agreement, including:
- Minimum operating environment for the covered software
- Electronic
- Environmental
- Operational
- Minimum Training required for user personnel
- No use of any 3rd party maintenance, on covered goods or services
- Prompt notification and description of a problem
- Minimum communications requirements, if online maintenance is offered
- The times during which the services are provided,
- What possible different levels of service should be available.
- How renewal issues are presented, to encourage renewal.
For Purchasers
Maintenance and support are among the most important issues to consider in the purchase of technology products, after deciding on the central system itself. Yet maintenance and support are often no more than an afterthought, if they are considered at all.
"Maintenance" means the maintaining, repairing or upgrading of the technology product itself.
"Support" is help for the people operating the technology products. "Support" refers to the initial and ongoing training for both new and experienced personnel, as well as providing assistance to operators who have operational issues, when problems or question arise.
A Maintenance and Support Agreement should clearly state certain issues:
- Periodic cost of maintenance and support coverage,
- How will the cost of coverage increase over time,
- Which services are included and which are not,
- The cost of non-covered services or the hourly rate for non-covered services,
- Minimum response time to a call.
Yet these issues are often left unclear or even ignored. Maintenance and Support Agreements are often poorly drafted. They often fail to provide the minimum requirements above, at least in terms most people can understand. Always negotiate the vendor's Maintenance and Support Agreement. At SM&R, we have been quite successful at negotiating changes to Maintenance and Support Agreements.
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