Newsgroups: bit.listserv.novell
Date:         Thu, 1 Oct 1992 18:28:00 CDT
Reply-To:     Novell LAN Interest Group <NOVELL@SUVM.BITNET>
From:         "Don M. Wee/Loyola Univ Chicago" <$ACSDMW@LUCCPUA.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: PC/LAN Service Contracts

> Hi Don/Others,
> 		some of us are not quite located Stateside and thus will
> probably be unable to make it to your presentation .. ;^))  Any chance of
> making a copy of your article/presentation (or not so diluted summary)
> available via EMail/FTP ?? ...
So much for my plug for the ACM SIGUCCS conference... 8-)
Funny thing is, now that ACM has accepted my paper, they hold the
copyright.  I'll have to ASK to be able to post it to an FTP site...
But I WILL ask....any suggestions for an appropriate site?
(Please email direct to me with any suggestions...save bandwidth.)
> I have some further enquiries through the rest of your article that I
> would be interested in some replies to from other readers...
> Maurice H. Rich		maurice@gu.edu.au   	| M.Rich@ens.gu.edu.au
> Technical Officer   (Computing)			| Ph  +61 7 875 7163
> Faculty of Environmental Sciences		| Fax +61 7 875 7459
> Griffith University,  Nathan,  Brisbane,   QLD,   Australia.  4122
((Note: many portions of Maurice's message edited out))
> >  . On-site service techs
> Did you have some sort of defined duty statement for these guys, or just
> additions listed in your contract..
Since "repairs" count towards the performance minimums, these were
explicitly defined, with all the usual legalese ("according to mfr
specs", "normal wear and tear" "install new parts or parts equivalent
to new," etc.)  Preventive maintenance and "helping our staff" were
not defined so rigorously: they are what is done AFTER repairs are
caught up.  We want them to be on our campus 8 hours a day so no one
has to wait for a truck to get here for the repair to start...and
if we're paying for trained technicians, we don't want them sitting
idle...but we DO want the contractor to meet their deadlines.
> >  . On-site parts storage for most-commonly-needed parts
> How was costing/funding for this managed.  Do you have some gentleman's
> arrangement with suppliers ??  (ie loan equipment direct from the suppliers)
Service vendor eats all of the costs of the parts...we provide space.
We chose a vendor that was authorized to do warranty work for our
major brands, and thus able to buy parts directly already.  In other
words, we try NOT to get in the middle.
> What sort of duties do "your" staff still provide ??
Help desk and over-the-phone software advice.
Triage:(we go first to determine whether the problem really is hardware)
Installations of all new systems, upgrades, & software.
Software support of all kinds
Networking support, purchase/configuration advice, training,
documentation, pointing out where the "any" key is....
> Have you got any sort of stats showing how this situation occured over a
> period of time ??
Regrettably, no good ones.  Before outsourcing, as we fell further
and further behind, record/stats-keeping was one of the duties that
slipped badly.  We also dealt with arithmetic means before the
switchover, and work with medians/percentiles now, so even our OLD
data is hard to compare.
((I realize this thread is somewhat off-topic...the service contracts
I'm talking about were for PCs in general rather than for servers or
operating system software support...so if someone can suggest a
more appropriate venue for this discussion, we can move it...though if
folks want to discuss whether to outsource Netware support,
I can assure you I have lots of opinions on THAT too.))
((Note to list: I deleted Maurice's main general question to the list:
what performance targets are everyone else using?))
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
DON M. WEE     LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO
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