SPI – Maintenance and Support Solutions (MSS) delivers nationwide 24x7 maintenance support for your equipment and your network.  MSS provides a single point of contact for the turnkey management with 4, 8 and 24 hour response time commitments.

Installed technology needs ongoing maintenance and support, or it will not remain functional for long. As technology becomes more embedded in the business world, inside educational institutions and government agencies management must come up with systems to support it, as well as create support roles and find people to fill them. The rules and guidelines for assessing the systems that support technology use are critical to the efficiency of these systems.

The challenge is to assess the status of maintenance and support mechanisms and people because the alternatives are so varied. In the early stages of the implementation of technology, the need for maintenance is often unanticipated. Employees with an interest in technology are assigned support roles in addition to their other obligations or pressed into action. Such systems and roles are difficult to sustain. It is a hallmark of the institutionalization of technology that more formal systems for maintenance and support be established.

Our Definition of SPI – Maintenance and Support Solutions ^TM Includes….
Maintenance means those preventive, diagnostic, updating, replacement, and repair procedures that an entity has in place. Maintenance can be provided either by persons who are part of the entity or through an outsourced contractor.  SPI – Maintenance and Support Solutions includes documenting trends and patterns in the use of applications or equipment. Specific maintenance items might include:

·          periodic replacement of parts and renewal of consumable supplies;

·          repair or replacement of faulty components;

·          periodic inspection and cleaning of equipment;

·          updating or upgrading hardware and software, including installing new operating system versions;

·          adding or deleting users from a system, or modifying user rights and properties;

·          periodic backup of stored files on a school network;

·          monitoring the condition and functionality of networks and equipment, including testing web site accesses and links; and

·          installing and removing equipment and applications.

·          help desks and other forms of putting a person in touch with another person to resolve a problem or provide advice;

·          automated information systems, such as searchable frequently-asked-question (FAQ) databases or newsletters;

·          initial training and familiarization tours for equipment and software, whether automated or conducted by a human;

·          technology integration support for administrative applications, usually conducted through specialized consultants or software/systems vendors.

·          As with maintenance, support can be delivered through a variety of mechanisms, including in-house technology specialists, external volunteers, or outsourced contracts.

·          Indicators address the procedures, response times, support sources, and workloads related to maintenance and support.

·          average number of yearly maintenance incidents by workstation, location, or site;

·          average number of yearly incidents per technical support staff hours;

·          total hours of downtime per year by workstation, employee, site, or business;

·          number of incidents per year by type or category; and

·          ratio of tech support staff to number of computers, total employees, number of buildings, sites, etc.

SPI – Maintenance and Support Unit Record Structure…
SPI – Maintenance and Support Solutions can address all of the data for the indicators listed above and can be derived from the support portion of a business' technology plan. Other sources of information could be our maintenance and support agreements or from the clients internal incident tracking system.

The identifiable units for recording purposes related to maintenance support are each incident, each technical support staff person, and each piece of equipment requiring repair.

List of potential data elements for a unit record: sample unit record for incident data
For each incident:

·          Incident demographics

·          Incident control ID-a unique number identifier for the call

·          Employee ID-a unique number identifier for the business

·          Equipment ID-this will supply information as to type variables, cost/financial variables, use variables, and warranty information

·          Software ID

·          Incident date-the date the incident was called in

·          Incident time-the time the incident was first called in

·          Initial incident cause category-the initial indication as to the cause (human, software, hardware, network [router/switch, wiring])

·          Symptoms – description of what was/is happening with the equipment

·          Incident resolution

·          Date picked up – date the equipment was transported to the repair facility

·          Trip #-the unique ID number for the actual pickup/delivery

·          Status-current information concerning state of repair (categories: waiting; in repair; holding for parts; completed; returned to owner)

·          Repairs made-a description of what was done to resolve the problem

·          Repair date-the date the equipment was repaired

·          Parts used

·          Parts cost

·          Labor hours-number of hours needed to resolve the problem, including pickup and delivery

·          Incident cause (categories: human error; software failure; hardware failure; network switching device or router failure; network cable or wiring failure; wireless system failure)

·          How repaired (at service location, picked up by staff, at service location, brought in by user; if software, by download, through telephone guidance to user by service staff)

·          Location of repair (at location, at site, at contractor location, at vendor location)

·          Date returned-the date the equipment was transported the point of pickup

·          Time and date stamp for when record was last modified

·          Incident resolution provider ID(s)

·          Hours spent on incident

For each support person:

·          Name

·          Provider ID

·          Location of provider

·          Primary role: outsource contractor, support specialist, tech support specialist

·          Hours per month spent on different activities: repair of equipment; wiring/cabling; training of personnel (other than technology support); training of technology support staff; help desk calls; network administration; initial installation of hardware; initial installation of software; hardware upgrades; software upgrades; technology support management (planning, budgeting/purchasing, etc.)