Year contract for an exsisting company suggestions

cnl83

Baseband Member
Messages
93
I have a customer that I have been doing work for about 4 years now. They want to cut IT cost and lock me in a year contract which may not be a bad thing. Ill provide the amount of time im working and get suggestions from some fellow IT guys.

Im averaging about 20-25 hours a week. Doing general IT work, maintenance, and providing support over the phone.

They want to lock me in for a year. What kind of pricing you guys think I need to toss them? What if they work me 40 hours one month?
 
I'm not fully understanding what's going on here. I take it you're an IT shop, or working on a freelance basis and they buy your support as and when it's needed?

currently that's about 40 hours per month.

how much to charge them depends on what they expect...

do they want 24 hour support, or just support in business hours,
if they only elect for support in business hours how will they feel when you leave at 6 saying that you'll finish the job tomorrow.
if they don't want you finishing the job tomorrow how much is your time for out of hours support, and what would be the process of agreeing this work, (always get them to agree to out of hours owkr before doing it).

what level of support do they expect?

also, they may only want you for 40 hours a month now, but realistically once they have you in the longer terms they will undoubtably be using your services more when it's at a flat rate.

assume that they'll be using you for around 60 hours, (I imagine that by the end of the year it'll probably be more than that after staff are told that all IT support is now bought and they should call you as much as they want).

another thing to think about if you;re writting a contract for a year of support is what are your turn around time for support calls. (SLA times), what happens if you go over these times. how will they come to you saying that they wanted problems fixed last week and feel that they are not getting good service for money.
 
I'm not fully understanding what's going on here. I take it you're an IT shop, or working on a freelance basis and they buy your support as and when it's needed?

currently that's about 40 hours per month.

how much to charge them depends on what they expect...

do they want 24 hour support, or just support in business hours,
if they only elect for support in business hours how will they feel when you leave at 6 saying that you'll finish the job tomorrow.
if they don't want you finishing the job tomorrow how much is your time for out of hours support, and what would be the process of agreeing this work, (always get them to agree to out of hours owkr before doing it).

what level of support do they expect?

also, they may only want you for 40 hours a month now, but realistically once they have you in the longer terms they will undoubtably be using your services more when it's at a flat rate.

assume that they'll be using you for around 60 hours, (I imagine that by the end of the year it'll probably be more than that after staff are told that all IT support is now bought and they should call you as much as they want).

another thing to think about if you;re writting a contract for a year of support is what are your turn around time for support calls. (SLA times), what happens if you go over these times. how will they come to you saying that they wanted problems fixed last week and feel that they are not getting good service for money.

I said 20-25 hours a week. I meant per month....sorry
 
I said 20-25 hours a week. I meant per month....sorry

Hmmm, it depends. Are you doing 24/7 call out or just casual 9-5 and a slower response rate. It depends on what kind of server level agreement they are looking for before you can put a price on it.
 
i would make sure that was clear in the contract , i would contact them ask them waht they require
also make the first price suggestion to them a bit higher than what you want as you can negotiate price etc later on
 
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