Atronic Systems

Support - Support Agreements

Atronic Systems offers its customers the option of and highly recommends having a maintenance and support agreement on their systems and networks. Our support agreements are a flexible and cost effective method to ensure that your systems are properly maintained, provide maximum availability, get the support they need when they need it and service delivery costs that are predictable and consistent.

Our support agreements are based on a “block time agreement’ which simply states that the customer agrees to pay ASI for a set number of hours on a recurring monthly basis. ASI in turn, agrees to discount the hours that comprise the agreed upon block of time, waive any overtime surcharges associated with work performed outside of normal business hours and provide first priority service delivery. We also have a plan that is a monthly fee that includes unlimited support based on computer problems. (Not for training purposes.) This plan is for clients that need high availability on a daily basis or someone that would like to budget for months in advance.

Sometime clients that are not familiar with the benefits of having a support agreement with Atronic Systems question why it is to their advantage to have a support agreement as opposed to just requesting service when they need it. We've listed some of the pro's and con's associated with having a support agreement vs. time and materials service delivery.

With a support agreement		Without a support agreement
Pro-active support vs. Reactive support
Support agreement customers receive pro-active support, in addition to the normal reactive incidents, ASI makes regular monthly inspections of their systems. Because of the agreement, gaining approval for pro-active maintenance is not required. Error logs and firewall logs are analyzed. Small problems are found before they become big problems. Service packs, patches, virus alerts and updates, network security issues and spyware are some of the many things that pro-active support can catch before they become major issues that affect your operations and are more difficult and more expensive to resolve.		PC and network support for clients that do not have a support agreement is delivered on a reactive basis. When a problem occurs that must be addressed because it is impairing operations, a call is placed for service, the service is scheduled. the problem must be diagnosed and repaired. During the scheduling and troubleshooting process normal operations are affected due to problems that might have easily been averted through preventative maintenance.
Regular contact vs. only responding to problems
Support agreement customers know that they can contact us within the terms of their agreement for any reason and there will not be any charges beyond there regular agreed upon monthly charges. This benefits the client because they can realize a much greater return on investment by utilizing features of their IT systems they may not have even realized were possible. We maintain a regular dialog with the client as well as their systems. This results in a much higher level of familiarity with your network systems and establishes a baseline of how things looks when everything is working normally which tends to makes problems much easier to identify and resolve when things are not working normally.		Clients that do not have a support agreement tend to only contact us for support when they feel that they have to, due mainly to working on a time and materials basis. This practice often results in smaller problems growing into larger problems before being addressed. The troubleshooting process is more difficult because we must dig further into a system to decide how and when a problem might have started. Without a baseline of how your network looks when there isn't a problem requires additional research and familiarization time to resolve issues.
Flexible service delivery
Because after hours surcharges are waived for support agreement clients, they have the flexibility to have services provided when it is convenient to their schedule. This increases overall system availability as well as the productivity of your users.		Time and material customers must decide whether or not it is worth it for work to be done at after hours rates or to have their business interrupted for minor, routine maintenance during their production times.
Priority service delivery
Our support agreement clients receive the highest service queue priority.		Although we do our best to provide fast service delivery to all of our customers, situations do occur that require priorities to be applied and it’s only right that the clients who have contracted with ASI for their support should receive priority service delivery.
Predictable costs for service delivery
Having a support agreement allows our clients to budget for a regular monthly expenditure associated with the cost of maintaining the IT systems that their businesses depend on. We make every attempt to keep the costs associated with our service delivery within the confines of the agreed upon block time agreement.		Without a support agreement in place there is no way to predict the costs associated with service delivery.
Cost effectiveness
Because the hours associated with the support agreement are discounted and after hours charges are waived for support agreement customers, it is a much more cost effective solution to service delivery.		Time and material rates are not discounted and after hours surcharges apply to work done outside of normal business hours.

Pro-Active support, regular contact with you and your systems, no surcharge for after hours service, priority support, predictable expense and the lowest cost of ownership are all reasons that having a support agreement with Atronic Systems to maintain your IT systems is in your best interest and will result in fewer problems with your systems and lower costs associated with keeping them up and running.

In our 20 years experience, clients that have support agreements consistently run better, with fewer problems and fewer interruptions to their production workflow when compared with to time and material clients. In addition to running better, our support agreement clients utilize far more features and technologies of the systems they have and generally work more efficiently than time and material clients and above all, these benefits are delivered at a consistently lower cost of ownership and support.