I'm sure there's one or two fellow self-employed I.T. solution providers around here?
I'm a one-man band providing a range of services to local companies and have about 20-25 customers - some giving me weekly work, others I hardly hear from; some with 2-3 computers, some with 20 or more (just to give you an idea of the scale I'm on). I would for example transfer existing out-of-date systems to new server setups, set up new systems from scratch, write some quite hefty software packages, provide graphic/web design services, sell hardware/software, and/or provide remote assistance to these customers.
Things are starting to snowball, having 3 new customers this week alone who are all pretty big-time companies and up until now I have just been setting up systems for a fee, doing jobs on-site and remotely for those customers and charging for my time accordingly. But a proportion of that time is not charged for, e.g. me logging into servers remotely to check backups are being completed, all event logs are OK, SQL databases are in tune etc.
Any business I have talked to whose I.T. is managed by a bigger firm is usually in some form of maintenance contract. What sort of conditions would there be in an average IT maintenance contract like this? Would this be a yearly fee that then reduces your hourly rate and also guarantees that you respond within a particular time? i.e. if a customer is not in a maintenance contract, they get charged more?
I charge £30 + VAT per hour. Being a one-man operation, I don't know what response time I could guarantee to a customer for callouts because it could vary from day to day depending on my location.
Should I start looking at maintenance contracts, and if so to what degree and what price approx?
E.g. pay me £x per year and you:
get charged £y less than standard rate,
and/or get my services on-site within 2 working days of callout or max. 1 day for critical problems;
get guaranteed that you will actually get my services at all?
I get on well with every one of my customers, all on a first-name basis but professional at the same time, and there's certain ones just wouldn't justify the cost of a maintenance contract but with others, my work is much more valuable to them. Usually the bigger companies, and understandably so. What I don't want to do is jeopardise my relationship with certain customers by demanding such contracts - what can I do, get turned down and have them go elsewhere for their I.T.?
I can beat the big companies in providing a better value service, one that is more personalised and one that is carried out by someone who genuinely knows the customer's system inside out; whereas the bigger companies beat me in terms of the amount of resources/engineers they can throw out at any time, and the speed of calling out too.
If you must know, I am 22 years old and still have a lot to learn about this whole operation, but I am doing alright and would like some advice from some of you experienced experts out there to help me along
Sorry for the long post.
I'm a one-man band providing a range of services to local companies and have about 20-25 customers - some giving me weekly work, others I hardly hear from; some with 2-3 computers, some with 20 or more (just to give you an idea of the scale I'm on). I would for example transfer existing out-of-date systems to new server setups, set up new systems from scratch, write some quite hefty software packages, provide graphic/web design services, sell hardware/software, and/or provide remote assistance to these customers.
Things are starting to snowball, having 3 new customers this week alone who are all pretty big-time companies and up until now I have just been setting up systems for a fee, doing jobs on-site and remotely for those customers and charging for my time accordingly. But a proportion of that time is not charged for, e.g. me logging into servers remotely to check backups are being completed, all event logs are OK, SQL databases are in tune etc.
Any business I have talked to whose I.T. is managed by a bigger firm is usually in some form of maintenance contract. What sort of conditions would there be in an average IT maintenance contract like this? Would this be a yearly fee that then reduces your hourly rate and also guarantees that you respond within a particular time? i.e. if a customer is not in a maintenance contract, they get charged more?
I charge £30 + VAT per hour. Being a one-man operation, I don't know what response time I could guarantee to a customer for callouts because it could vary from day to day depending on my location.
Should I start looking at maintenance contracts, and if so to what degree and what price approx?
E.g. pay me £x per year and you:
get charged £y less than standard rate,
and/or get my services on-site within 2 working days of callout or max. 1 day for critical problems;
get guaranteed that you will actually get my services at all?
I get on well with every one of my customers, all on a first-name basis but professional at the same time, and there's certain ones just wouldn't justify the cost of a maintenance contract but with others, my work is much more valuable to them. Usually the bigger companies, and understandably so. What I don't want to do is jeopardise my relationship with certain customers by demanding such contracts - what can I do, get turned down and have them go elsewhere for their I.T.?
I can beat the big companies in providing a better value service, one that is more personalised and one that is carried out by someone who genuinely knows the customer's system inside out; whereas the bigger companies beat me in terms of the amount of resources/engineers they can throw out at any time, and the speed of calling out too.
If you must know, I am 22 years old and still have a lot to learn about this whole operation, but I am doing alright and would like some advice from some of you experienced experts out there to help me along
Sorry for the long post.