Third-Party Hardware Maintenance vs Manufacturer's Warranty: What's Best For Your Business?
By: adam howard
Submitted: 2010-09-05 21:51:44 | Word Count: 841
When purchasing computer hardware for your business, system availability could be a major consideration. While you hope it will remain reliable, you need to manage the risk that at a while a important system element will fail, calling for hardware maintenance.
Such failures typically end in the system being unavailable to users until repaired. This 'system down-time' will be very expensive when users sit idle and unproductive.
Several assume that the quality manufacturer's warranty can adequately shield them. But the 'small print' of commonplace warranties will lead to less than satisfactory hardware maintenance results for businesses. Even expensive warranty uplifts might not deliver adequate protection against these costs.
Response Times
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One among your systems fails, so you decision the warranty-provider's phonephone hotline and speak to an operator during a call centre -- perhaps overseas -- who simply takes a message.
If the failed system is below a 'next business day' phonephone response arrangement for hardware maintenance, then your workers may be unable to try and do their job for every day or additional before the warranty supplier even gets around to diagnosing the problem. And with a 'best effort' onsite response, it could be several days before a hardware maintenance engineer arrives.
If the system loss has company-wide impact then the implications are even more serious. Customary warranties solely cowl you for hardware maintenance throughout working hours -- thus a failure on a Friday afternoon might leave your business crippled well into the subsequent Monday.
Businesses which will't afford this kind of downtime ought to look to specialist third party hardware maintenance providers that maximise system availability by tailoring support arrangements to fulfill your specific business needs.
Seek for hardware maintenance service providers who offer short, outlined response times -- such as a guarantee of a response to your decision within ten minutes from a trained hardware maintenance engineer who can solve your issue, and on-site response within 2 hours for important system failures.
Conjointly seek for organisations who can assign a hardware maintenance engineer permanently to your account. This ensures that they become acquainted along with your IT atmosphere and personnel -- a factor crucial to ensuring speedy response and determination of essential system failures.
Components Holdings
Hardware maintenance response times are irrelevant if you then have to attend for components to be shipped from interstate or overseas. Equipment manufacturers typically hold replacement elements for warranty service in an exceedingly single location nationally. Therefore, you may be waiting for twenty-four to forty eight hours whereas the half you need is shipped, delivered and installed.
A hardware maintenance supplier that is focussed on maximising system uptime holds spares locally to shorten delivery times. Ask potential service suppliers for an explanation of their elements holding methods and methodologies. Find out what ratio of spares are held against systems underneath contract and whether or not these components are frequently tested. With sufficient native spares, hardware maintenance engineers will attend web site with the suitable half in hand to additional speed the repair process.
Beyond Hardware 'Break-Fix'
A commonplace warranty can only cover you for the repair of your system, together with the delivery and installation of replacement elements, and provides no guarantees as to when your hardware maintenance issue can be resolved.
A hardware maintenance service tailored to maximise systems availability, however, offers a ton a lot of, as well as:
? taking possession of the 'grey' areas -- like operating system problems and other causes of hardware issues
? a first-call fix rate of over 95% -- which means you will not have to wait for multiple engineer visits before system functionality is restored
These superior service levels meet the operational wants of companies that are addicted to system availability. Ask potential hardware maintenance suppliers for customer testimonials and references to substantiate their service levels.
So, may be a standard manufacturer's warranty extremely sensible enough for your business?
A normal warranty service might be 'free', however having employees unable to work -- or customers in a position to contact you -- may end up costing your business heavily in the long run. Even expensive warranty uplifts don't utterly mitigate the risks.
The good news is that specialised and highly-centered third-party hardware maintenance solutions are obtainable to solve this problem.
Your hardware maintenance agreement will be tailored to satisfy your specific operational needs and risk management strategy. Paid on a monthly basis, they offer you better money flow and operational flexibility -- for around the same as a manufacturer's warranty uplift.
But most significantly, they'll reduce system downtime by several hours a year -- saving you many thousands in lost productivity and revenue.
Author Resource:-
Adam has been writing articles online for nearly 2 years now. Not only does this author specialize in Third-Party Hardware Maintenance vs Manufacturer's Warranty: What's Best For Your Business?
You can also check out his latest website about
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