Computer Maintenance - Can You Afford To Offer A Fixed Price?
By Joshua Feinberg
Computer maintenance contracts are one area of your business where you may want to consider using a price-fixed model. Time and materials pricing is almost always going to be better for you, but many clients respond well to fixed price maintenance contracts.

So, if you insist on doing a price-fixed maintenance agreement, there are some items you must make sure you cover off. You want to protect yourself as much as possible and the only way to do that is to write up a good and tight maintenance agreement.

If you don't have tight provisions, the well-intentioned and even well-trained internal guru (the guy you set up as the go-to guy in your absence) will make mistakes. This guy will cause you to come out to do some maintenance on things you didn't bargain for. You don't want to be spending too much time fixing things that shouldn't have been broken in the first place.

You can't afford to take that risk, and this is why your maintenance agreement must be solid. Here are some issues to consider when drafting a fixed price agreement for maintenance:

Will training be included?
Are you responsible if an ASP goes down?
Are you responsible for expansion as the company grows?
Are you responsible if they get hit by a fire or flood?
Are you responsible for maintenance if someone hacks into their system?
Are you responsible for ISP or phone company outages or issues with the web and/or email hosting companies?
Does your maintenance agreement cover issues arising from office politics or crossfire? Trust us, this happens!
Does your maintenance cover patches, updates and upgrades?
What happens if there’s pirated software?
Have you

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