In essence, a support agreement is to support and manage what you have now on an ongoing basis, but not to cover every future change or project. Making significant changes or additions is an extra, which will either be quoted for as a small amount of ad-hoc consultancy or as part of a project.

Typically, from a very high level, the below points are included in our service plans…

• Helpdesk and remote support – unlimited remote support for day to day issues, backed up by response time targets.
• Proactive monitoring & maintenance – 24/7/365 monitoring of servers, endpoints and key cloud services.
• Regular patching of OS and third-party apps.
• Security and monitoring – AV and EDR
• Email filtering and protection policies, policing correct SPF/DKIM/DMARC records
• Backup & Recovery for agreed systems such as servers and M365 tenants
• New starters and leavers – additions, moves, changes for new starters and leavers within agreed timeframes
• Account management – regular reviews and reporting, budgeting and roadmap conversations

These are the type of inclusions that help to prevent problems, rather than just fixing things when they break.

Conversely, some of the changes and additions that are typically not included in our service plans include the following...

Projects and significant changes

• Server refreshes and major upgrades
• Adding new PC’s and Printers
• Network redesigns/firewall replacements
• Cloud migrations
• Major M365 reconfiguration such as rolling out new features or company restructuring

We cannot include these types of services in a maintenance plan as project work is finite, needs to be planned and requires a high amount of effort and attention. It can involve out of hours work, significant risk management and a formal change control process.

Onsite visits

In person visits are not always included in all plans as travel time and costs can be disruptive and expensive. Efficient remote-first support helps to keep costs down for both parties.

After-hours & Emergency Work

• Includes work outside standard business hours (evenings, weekends, bank holidays) – unless of course a specific out of hours agreement has been established.

Setting up a business to provide regular out of hours and emergency cover requires highly specific arrangements to be in place including rota’s and extra staffing. Pricing this separately allows us to keep the core monthly fee affordable, whilst giving you, the customer, the option to have this service, only when you truly need it.

Onboarding/initial remediation

• Auditing and documenting the initial environment
• Bringing systems up to a safe and manageable condition
• Deploying the technology and services used in your chosen package

It is normal for most businesses to pay some kind of onboarding fee when they start to work with Sound Networks. This covers the cost of bringing your IT up to a safe, secure and manageable state. This cost varies widely from one customer to another depending on how things have been looked after prior to us working with them, a neglected environment cannot be fixed for free. By completing this properly at the start of our relationship, ongoing support is smoother and more effective from that point onwards.

We invest a significant amount of effort upfront to get your IT into this safe and supportable condition. Rather than hiding that cost in a higher monthly fee for everyone, we treat it as a one-off customer specific onboarding project so that your ongoing costs remain fair.

Out of scope systems

• Anything not listed in the schedule of supported items in your contract (e.g. personal devices, unsupported systems and software, shadow IT solutions)

We cannot support what we haven’t assessed or brought up to standard. It also helps us to avoid accidental support creep which can undermine service quality for all our customers.

Strange as it may seem, out of contract charges exist to help us help you – why is this?

• It’s fairer to all our clients – if we include unlimited projects, on site and after hours work in the flat fee, we’d have to price all clients much higher to cover this eventuality. Separately quoting for out-of-scope work means you only pay for what you need – and it keeps our packages affordable for all.
• It protects our service quality – significant changes and emergencies can soak up a lot of our time. By treating these separately, we can plan properly and allocate resources as needed. This helps to make sure that our other clients regular support is not impacted.
• Clarity and control – by establishing these clear boundaries surrounding what is not covered helps you to understand how your monthly investment is utilised. Plus, you will always know in advance when something is going to fall outside the scope of your agreement.

A more straightforward approach could be to look at it like this; The agreement is like a servicing plan for your car – regular maintenance is part of the package, but if you decide to swap or upgrade the engine, then that’s a project. All of this needs some time to plan, time to complete, and you have to pay for the parts.

In Summary

A clear agreement is not about us trying to trick you into paying hidden fees. It’s there to protect you the client and avoid hidden surprises. It protects you by making sure our service is sustainable and it enables us to build a long term relationship with you, rather than just a transactional one.