Three Reasons We Swear by Maintenance
Alex Hooper, Cisilion’s Director of Services & Business Transformation
If you’re on the fence about whether to purchase (or renew) maintenance, I’ve got some wise words for inspired by Cisco’s Scott Schell. I often meet with my clients to better understand what they are looking for in a maintenance contract, and one pattern constantly emerges – every client wants to avoid or reduce risk.
And it’s clear to me – in an industry fraught with network-related uncertainties and security vulnerabilities, companies are relying on maintenance to regain control of their IT resources and sidestep a whole lot of unnecessary risk.
Here are the top three reasons that constantly get brought up:
1. We can’t afford downtime
That’s not surprising. Who can? To put things in perspective, I’ve seen clients who initially declined coverage found that the cost of one service call to a vendor was roughly equivalent to a quarter of an entire contract (?). So not only is having a maintenance plan helping customers reduce downtime, it’s saving them money, too.
2. We need access to experts
With the vast number of systems, solutions, and applications in today’s IT mix, an in–house team can’t possibly reach expert status on any one thing. So it makes sense that customers would prefer a direct line to techs with a strict focus should something go wrong.
Again, we’re ultimately talking about ways to reduce risk, but in this instance, customers are also benefitting from increased operational efficiency.
3. Warranties don’t cover human errors
It’s true. Warranties are great, but they naturally only cover product defects and things within the vendor’s control. On the other hand, a maintenance contract is like insurance for those unpredictable IT moments. That’s when you want access to our engineers, replacement parts, OS updates and upgrades proactive diagnostic assistance, and the Cisilion knowledge base.
Your Next Steps
Anyway, I hope this is helpful. If you’re still not sure about maintenance, please fill in the form below and we can set up a call to discuss. Don’t be afraid to ask the hard questions. We want you to have all the facts when it comes to the real value that Cisilion can bring to your business.