Why Purchasing 5 Years of
support with your IT acquisitions is the best decision for you and your company
Convergent Technologies
Group has been in the business of selling IT solutions and services for over 10
years and when it comes to support contracts, we have seen the best and the
worst. The best involves a customer purchasing a long-term support contract
with pre-determined costs and an excellent service experience. The worst
involves a customer buying a short-term support contract that will fluctuate in
cost annually, that seems to come up for renewal every time they sneeze. We
have seen lapses in contracts where the client simply forgets to renew the
contract, resulting in some stiff financial penalties when they re-establish
the contract. Other not so pleasant experiences include; higher year over year
costs for the same equipment due to no new purchases to leverage, forced
refreshes due to the extreme costs to extend support on an IT asset, also
resulting in disruptions to the business, catastrophic failures after someone
missed the email notifying them their support contract was expiring, and many
other unfortunate situations resulting from short-term support.
Reasons
for buying 5 years of upfront support:
- Blending the support with a hardware purchase on the front end allows the buyer to leverage the overall value of the purchase for the best discounts on both hardware and support.
- Maintaining a support contract annually requires more administrative work for your business and more chances for someone to miss a renewal.
- Expired support contract often involves penalties, potentially costing you thousands to re-establish and put your company at risk of an uncovered incident.
- Most IT assets today have a life cycle of 5+ years versus the recommended 3-year refresh cycle of 10 years ago.
- Support costs tend to increase year over year, sometimes forcing a refresh in your technology, leading to unplanned capital expenses and planned downtime for your business.
- Maximize your investment by extending the useful life cycle of your IT assets.
- Company budgets are easier to predict with a 5-year term versus going with an annual or 3-year term with unknown costs for subsequent years.
- Avoiding the sales ploy of a low upfront cost to win the business only to take their pound of flesh in support costs for future years to make it up.
- Most companies will not provide written guarantees as to what you will pay for support beyond the initial terms, only offering estimates which can be far from reality.
- You will look like a hero when you stay within budget!
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About
CTG: Convergent Technologies Group, an HPE Platinum Partner,
has been helping clients improve efficiency, reduce costs and increase profits
since its founding in 2005. A full-service solutions-based IT company
headquartered in Midlothian, Va., CTG provides businesses and organizations
with the best-in-class solutions by partnering with the most innovative
companies in the industry. CTG designs, manages and deploys cost-effective
solutions specifically aimed to address clients’ unique technology needs.
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