In our last post we talked about technical support for free products and services.
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Today we'll talk about technical support for paid business products.
If your business needs a software or hardware tool to function and you will lose productivity or money because that product is not functioning correctly, pay for support. This should be a no-brainer. If your business cannot afford support for the product, that means your business cannot afford the product - find and install a less expensive product. That's one of the services we provide for our clients. Your IT vendor or IT Department should be doing the same.
Without paid vendor support your business could be down for indefinite periods while you figure out how to get your business-critical product back up and running.
If the business owner is OK with losing functionality in a technical product for hours or days while an employee or IT contractor figures out what's wrong, then this is not an issue. But remember the lost productivity of that employee - they are no longer working on the business, they're working on a distraction from making your business money. And it's wasting money on the IT contractor that should have been spent on critical vendor support.
As I mentioned in the previous post, we spend much of our time finding the right technical vendors for our clients and then managing those vendors for our clients. We always include caveats that we require support contracts for the vendors we manage. They have the expertise. No matter how much we know about a product, we may not be up-to-date on the latest patches or fixes or glitches and how to quickly repair them. We facilitate the smooth operation of the products and ensure the right technical infrastructure is available for them, but it's always better if we or your IT department are working with a vendor, not on their own.
I have a long history of working with vendors and vendor support staffs. I've worked with some great ones, and I've worked with some that we never did get support and for the most part figured things out for ourselves. In the late 90s we would call Oracle Australia for support on the Oracle Financials ERP module because they were the only ones we found to be helpful. Our staff would work evenings to schedule those calls when the Australian Oracle staff was available.
Two items in the Wall Street journal prompted this post.
Google Apps Lacks Strong Enterprise Support, Says CIO
One of the reasons we are a Google Apps reseller and have moved away from Microsoft Exchange is that Google now provides telephone support for their paid products. That's why we tell every business - even if you're a solopreneur with only one Google Apps license - pay the $50 per seat so if you run into an issue you have a tech at Google to work on the problem.
We've found Google support to be as good as any other vendors supporting our client products. They're quick to respond and knowledgeable. I'll be happy to throw them under the bus when they're not, but so far we've had nothing but good experiences with their support.
The complaint of a lack of support from Google for Google Apps is old news - they've taken great strides in addressing those concerns and providing support, at least for the functionality in Google Apps. I haven't worked in the enterprise arena (Fortune 1000 companies) since the turn of the century. But I can tell you that I would have been pleased with Google in the 90s and they compare favorably to any of the enterprise vendors I was working with in the 80s and 90s.
One of the reasons we are a Google Apps reseller and have moved away from Microsoft Exchange is that Google now provides telephone support for their paid products. That's why we tell every business - even if you're a solopreneur with only one Google Apps license - pay the $50 per seat so if you run into an issue you have a tech at Google to work on the problem.
We've found Google support to be as good as any other vendors supporting our client products. They're quick to respond and knowledgeable. I'll be happy to throw them under the bus when they're not, but so far we've had nothing but good experiences with their support.
The complaint of a lack of support from Google for Google Apps is old news - they've taken great strides in addressing those concerns and providing support, at least for the functionality in Google Apps. I haven't worked in the enterprise arena (Fortune 1000 companies) since the turn of the century. But I can tell you that I would have been pleased with Google in the 90s and they compare favorably to any of the enterprise vendors I was working with in the 80s and 90s.
Visit On-Site Technical Solutions for information on how you can move to Google Apps or other Cloud Computing applications. Call us for all of your network computing and business IT needs. We can also help with your data security and mobile computing. Follow us online below. Call or text me at 1-949-212-2168.
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