The Value of Support
The most important investment a company makes in its enterprise system is not software and implementation services. As important as those are, the biggest impact on a company comes from ongoing customer support. The term raises images of vendors helping users solve problems and that is certainly the most visible piece. But support is much more than phone calls and knowledgebases.
So what prompted me to bring this up? Dennis Howlett of ZDNet wrote a piece recently about Siemens and their threat leave SAP support in favor of a third party provider. In the end the two parties came together and struck a new deal, but there had to be some big beads of sweat on the foreheads in Walldorf.
Now, I don’t know the specifics behind the story, but it started me thinking about what would cause the latter to part ways with the former and seek another. A third party can’t offer the same level of support one gets from the software publisher, nor do they have the same level of subject matter expertise. But the driving factor behind any decision is value: does the service match the dollars spent.
All support has value, but some has more than others because the provider works hard at building in value.
To ensure we are meeting customer expectations for support, we continually assess our programs and measure them against these questions:1. Are customers comfortable engaging us in discussions about product direction
2. Are we innovating or just keeping pace
3. Are we keeping the upgrade and migration paths smooth
4. Do our horizontal products extend and enhance the customer’s core applications
Without a doubt, the answer to number 1 is the driver for numbers two through six and we strive for answers with every customer engagement. I’m not saying we sit down and run through the list one by one, but we do listen, real hard, to what our customers are telling us.
Every closed support incident is an obvious example of your support dollars at work. What’s less obvious is the value of what goes on behind the scenes: The work being done to ensure your investment long into the future.
Engage your software provider and ask them the hard questions about what they are doing to build value into the support and listen, real hard, to their answers.
