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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Without a support agreement in place there is no way to predict the costs associated with 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.