Question How To Determine Rate For Charging Application Maintenance And Support Fees

[sgrace]

Hello All,

I've built and implemented an Access 2010 application for a corporate client. It's entirely menu driven, with no user access to the navigation pane. It's split with multiple BEs on a share drive and the FEs on individual PCs (distributed via Auto FE Updater). Two hundred users have been defined to the application but so far there are only up to 10 max concurrent users at a time.

The clients want to add more users to the system but after that will go into maintenance and support mode. The question is how much I should charge for the maintenance and support service on a monthly basis.

Does anyone have any experience with this kind of thing? I'm not looking for a $ amount as much as strategies/guidelines for pricing. The clients anticipate using the application for about four years, at which point a new, corporate-wide application should be rolled out and my app will get replaced by it. They will probably need my help to convert the data from my app into the new app, and will want/need occasional enhancements to the system over the next four years as well.

Any insights appreciated, or if you know of some good write-ups or other forums for this kind of thing.

Thanks.

 

[spikepl]

There are two issues here: your availability and then the rate. Support is normally handled through a Service Level Agreement (common term - google it), where e.g. your response time to various types of requests (from fatal errors to desirable fixes) are stipulated, as well as the compensation for providing this availability.

For enhancements, devise a Configuration Management strategy. The essential element of which is the Change Management.

1. Who makes requests for change, and how are they to be conveyed and stored.
2. WHo evaluates requests from business perspective
3. WHat is the procedure for deciding to work on a change or to drop it or to postpone it
4. WHat is the procedure for testing the change (including regression testing - i..e verifying that seemingly untouched parts of the code still work as before) and approving it
5. How exactly are updates to be carried out, and when and how often (a riosk assessment should help determining when changes can/should/should not be implemented)


As to pricing, that depens on so many things that it is impossible too give any advice.

Service Level Agreemnets carry a price for availability, and may have various rates for specific services rendered.

AS to enhancements - that is bespoke development, and pricing that is up to you, depending on too many factors not known to us.

BTW: I am very very impressed by your customer's planning fgor something or other 4 years down the road in the IT area. If this truly is a plan (and not just some doodle on a napkin over lunch) then that is exceptional and impressive!

Update: One oft-forgotten feature of "enhancements" is documentation (of the system, of how to insatll/mainatin it, how to use it) and changes stemming from the "enhancements". It is can be expensive and seemingly unproductive to make and many clients do not see the need for it. In such case draw their attention to the bus factor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor