Why take out IT Warranty Upgrades with a manufacturer?
by Anonymous on 2007-09-23
Do you wish to pay out that annual fee for IT Extended Warranties to the manufacturer of £x thousand Euros per annum for your business critical equipment or would you prefer to take the risk and hope that your IT equipment does not breakdown for the next 3 years.
This is a question that most Small to Medium sized businesses face. Often it is the very small businesses that decide to take the risk to not take out cover and the reason for this is to save cash. However if that SME has already experienced an IT failure it is very unlikely that they would take the short term view and instead they would insure themselves against the probability that their IT hardware or software could go down.
The risk of not taking out that IT Maintenance Contract is that the business could not be functioning for several hours or indeed several days. As a business grows it goes without saying that the bigger the business the bigger the losses and also it could even sink a smaller business.
Should we take out IT Warranty Upgrades/ IT Maintenance Contracts?
It is really quite simple: companies should look at their business critical equipment and look at all the available related maintenance uplift services.
Business critical IT equipment from Printers to Servers to Storage often comes with a 1 year Base Warranty from the manufacturer but what is often required is an uplift so that instead of Next Business Day 1 year Base Warranty you opt for a Same Day 4 hour response so that your company does not lose more than half a day’s business.
The moral of the tale is that taking out an extended manufacturer’s warranty /maintenance contract ensures that you minimize downtime and ensures that your customers are continually serviced and your company does not lose money.
It can also be useful to employ an outside company to track expiring service contracts and identify new service and technology refresh sales opportunities.
One company which can provide effective service contract and warranty management program is Occident International Ltd . Companies such as this can leverage their own contract renewal systems to dramatically improve service renewal rates. Amongst other things they utilize automated e-mail notifications in advance of expiring service contracts and telesales follow-up.
The importance of registering your IT Service Contract
Over 60% of IT equipment is not registered with the manufacturer. This means that in the case of a breakdown the service levels provided by the manufacturer will not be adhered to as they will not have a record of your equipment on the call-logging databases.
This means that if you have purchased a 4 hour On-Site response for your servers the manufacturer may not come out to repair your machines until the next day. This level of business downtime can obviously cost a great deal of money.
If, however the maintenance contract is registered you should enjoy seamless service from the manufacturer.
Another problem with not registering your IT Warranty Upgrades is that you will not be contacted by your Business Partner or manufacturer when it is about to expire. Typically IT Extended Warranties last a period of 3 years and for many endusers it is difficult to keep a track of when the warranty / maintenance contract is due to expire. You may then decide to buy new equipment but increasingly manufacturers are offering Post Warranty Packaged Services or contracts which has the advantage of not having to reload all your software onto new servers and ensuring business uptime.
As we become more dependent upon IT; just ask a company who loses its broadband access for a week! it is becoming imperative that IT Managers in SME’s and larger corporates look long and hard at their IT inventory and ensure that their support contracts are watertight.
This is a question that most Small to Medium sized businesses face. Often it is the very small businesses that decide to take the risk to not take out cover and the reason for this is to save cash. However if that SME has already experienced an IT failure it is very unlikely that they would take the short term view and instead they would insure themselves against the probability that their IT hardware or software could go down.
The risk of not taking out that IT Maintenance Contract is that the business could not be functioning for several hours or indeed several days. As a business grows it goes without saying that the bigger the business the bigger the losses and also it could even sink a smaller business.
Should we take out IT Warranty Upgrades/ IT Maintenance Contracts?
It is really quite simple: companies should look at their business critical equipment and look at all the available related maintenance uplift services.
Business critical IT equipment from Printers to Servers to Storage often comes with a 1 year Base Warranty from the manufacturer but what is often required is an uplift so that instead of Next Business Day 1 year Base Warranty you opt for a Same Day 4 hour response so that your company does not lose more than half a day’s business.
The moral of the tale is that taking out an extended manufacturer’s warranty /maintenance contract ensures that you minimize downtime and ensures that your customers are continually serviced and your company does not lose money.
It can also be useful to employ an outside company to track expiring service contracts and identify new service and technology refresh sales opportunities.
One company which can provide effective service contract and warranty management program is Occident International Ltd . Companies such as this can leverage their own contract renewal systems to dramatically improve service renewal rates. Amongst other things they utilize automated e-mail notifications in advance of expiring service contracts and telesales follow-up.
The importance of registering your IT Service Contract
Over 60% of IT equipment is not registered with the manufacturer. This means that in the case of a breakdown the service levels provided by the manufacturer will not be adhered to as they will not have a record of your equipment on the call-logging databases.
This means that if you have purchased a 4 hour On-Site response for your servers the manufacturer may not come out to repair your machines until the next day. This level of business downtime can obviously cost a great deal of money.
If, however the maintenance contract is registered you should enjoy seamless service from the manufacturer.
Another problem with not registering your IT Warranty Upgrades is that you will not be contacted by your Business Partner or manufacturer when it is about to expire. Typically IT Extended Warranties last a period of 3 years and for many endusers it is difficult to keep a track of when the warranty / maintenance contract is due to expire. You may then decide to buy new equipment but increasingly manufacturers are offering Post Warranty Packaged Services or contracts which has the advantage of not having to reload all your software onto new servers and ensuring business uptime.
As we become more dependent upon IT; just ask a company who loses its broadband access for a week! it is becoming imperative that IT Managers in SME’s and larger corporates look long and hard at their IT inventory and ensure that their support contracts are watertight.
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