Maintenance Agreement Costs 1

[amandamorris]

Hello,

I am new on my job (couple of months) and have been tasked with taking care of our phone system. Our maintenance agreement is up and I need to renew the contract, however, my boss wants to get the best deal possible. I have been searching the web all night (how I found this forum) and really can not find anything on how to price or what to expect when pricing a new maintenance agreement, so I am asking for help.

Can someone give me an idea on what is a fair per port price for a maintenance agreement on IP Office Partner Edition with voice mail? I will be calling local companies this week, but I would like to have some idea of what to expect cost wise and any tips or help will be greatly appreciated. If it matters, we simply need mon-fri 8a-5p and I am in NC.

Thanks all and hope you have a great week

 

[jamie77]

It's not really something that should be discussed on here. Every company has their own way of working out the price of a contact based on what is covered and included.

It's not all about price either. It's about the quality of engineers the company has.

Jamie Green

[bold]A[/bold]vaya [bold]R[/bold]egistered [bold]S[/bold]pecialist [bold]E[/bold]ngineer

 

[amandamorris]

It's not really something that should be discussed on here. Every company has their own way of working out the price of a contact based on what is covered and included.

It's not all about price either. It's about the quality of engineers the company has. "

Jamie,

Thanks for your reply and I could not agree more that cost is not everything, but when your boss wants to cut cost, then you try and cut cost. I will try and show the value in the maintenance at every price point provided.

Could you please point me in the right direction where I can discuss or learn more, so that I know that I am in the right ballpark as far as figures and maintenance options are concerned. The current contract was signed 3 years ago (3 yr contract) and so I am looking to find out what current price points are. I am not looking for someone to give me a hard figure, I just would like to learn as much as I can before I start negotiating so that I can avoid sounding like a newbie .

Thanks again for your help
Amanda

 

[DavidCT]

Amanda,

The partner edition really doesn't require highly skilled technicians, it's the most basic of ip office edition.

You should start by understanding what your current maintenance agreement includes. Quarterly updates? Hardware warranty? Moves/adds/changes? I've seen maintenance agreements that cost hundreds and month, but the client was still billed for every service request.

Next you need to find out what the service level agreement states. Is there a guaranteed response within a certain number of hours from logging a problem? Is same day and onsite service included or extra?

And then you want to ask what the hourly rate is for standard service if you have no maintenance contract. If you just called when there's a problem.

Call at least three Avaya business partners and make a spreadsheet.

 

[ipohead]

I'm no expert on IP Office support contracts but as rule of thumb for maintenance I'd start with 5% of the hardware cost, but like everyone has said there are many variables which can make a real difference to the final cost.

You also need to look at this from another viewpoint and work out the cost to your business if you lost your phones for an hour, a day or a week.

 

[amriddle01]

You won't last long at 5% hardware costs