Envisioning, designing and building a new enterprise system is very rewarding for many of us. However, the value of these systems is gained through their continued operation. For this reason, ongoing support and maintenance is a fundamental aspect of all enterprise systems and as such must be considered early in the process and support strategies must be included in the design process.
Support considerations must take into account all system components (hardware, application software, infrastructure, etc) as well as operational concerns (number of shifts per week, holiday coverage, required uptime levels, etc.). Once the operational requirements are identified, specific support strategies should be designed to minimize the outage of each system component.
When evaluating support options it is beneficial to look for integrated offerings from a single source. This approach provides the broadest coverage and reduces outage delays due to the transfer of issues from one organization to another.
Prior to evaluating third party vendors, examine your internal resources to gain an understanding of what you can and cannot do. For example, many companies can leverage their internal support desk for troubleshooting tier 1 mobile device issues. However, many of these organizations generally do not have the detailed knowledge to identify and resolve root cause issues, especially if the organization is new to mobile or wireless technologies. In addition to evaluating your internal skill sets, also evaluate your resource availability as supporting 20 devices is much different than supporting 200 or more.
Contact DecisionPoint Systems, Inc. to learn more about the best support strategies for your enterprise and DecisionPoint’s MobileCare™ Support.