after sales services or support (1 Viewer)

AccessProgram

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What perhaps could be the possible after sales services, support or product can be done or offered when a program is sold?
 

ajetrumpet

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What perhaps could be the possible after sales services, support or product can be done or offered when a program is sold?

it's very simple dude. the reason you offer support contracts is because the program is not built to efficiency. it never is. especially with big companies.
 

AccessProgram

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Oh I am sorry, I may have conveyed my question wrongly. What I mean is what kind or type of service or product or support that we can also provide for a fee after we have sold the main product (the software) ?

Like monthly maintenance of the database or what more?
 

gemma-the-husky

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among others

a) support for operational queries
b) support for errors/bugs
c) improvements requested by client
d) improvements introduced by developer
 

AccessProgram

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Thanks Dave. I was thinking of having a monthly service or support.

Can I suggest monthly db compact as its maintenance?
 

gemma-the-husky

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depends on what you have to do

if you can do from off-site its easier - if you have to go onsite, it will take longer.

But I dont think compacting on its own would justify a large mtce charge
 

AccessProgram

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I see. What other after sales product or service can you recommend to me Dave? And how much do you think it should cost?
 

DCrake

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Some compaines charge a percentage of the cost of the original product, say 15%, so if they £1000 for the app then the support would be £150 pa. That is of course what level of support you are offering.

You should offer free support for the first 30 days for firefighting then after that you need to discuss with the client what type of support they require, On-site , Off-site, Remote connect, telephone, email, etc.

Then you need to look at whether you are supporting the app only or the data as well. What disaster recovery options you have in place. What would constitute a call out and the turn around time. It all adds up at the end to an overall support cost.

You also need to build in any PCR's (Product Customisation Requests). Changes to the system that were not mentioned at the time of sign off.

David
 

AccessProgram

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Thanks David. In addition to that, what support can I provide for Application only and what support can I provide for Data? I have only few ideas on my mind now. Can suggest some?
 

DCrake

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Supporting the application depends on how you give them the application.

Is it self installed
What format it it in
Are there any additional addins,ocx's, dll's that come with the app
What operating system has it been tested on
Can you access the system remotely

As far as data is concerned, primarily it is there concern in relation to backups, however if there is an issue of mainitaining tables, such as lookups this should have been built into the app.

Losses in referential integrity due to parent/child table deletions should have also been considered.

If part of the delivery of the application was the migration of data from a legacy system to the new system then you are responsible for the data integrity on delivery.

As far as company liablilty is concerned, if you are on site and the company losses their data then they can claim on their insurance, however, it you take the data away and then lose it or it becomes unuseable then you are liable.

David
 

AccessProgram

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David,

The program is not self-installed
It is in ACCDE format
There are no additional files such as ocx's, dll yet.
The program is only for XP
The program cannot be access remotely

For the moment I have not thought about liabilities on support, I will think about that. Thanks for that input.

I have question though, I have not tried creating dll or ocx yet.

If I am going to create a dll from my project's module or class module, how can I put it into reference?
 

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