Some advice required, been asked to quote for a support contract.

[TheAnalyst]

Hi all,
Firstly thanks for taking the time to read my post.
I've been contracting through umbrellas in various desktop support roles now for about 6 years, I'm currently engaged in a full time 2nd line desktop support 12 month contract for a national newspaper company that pays reasonably well (£21 p/h), is fairly secure and will probably at some point end up in a permanent position. The company is fantastic and training is superb, latest being that they have just agreed to put me through MS MCITP Server Administrator courses & exams.

I've set myself up as a sole trader (for simplicity) and last year I started advertising support services for home and small business users locally and on a couple of "middle men" websites to make some extra money. I've not really perused this fully yet therefore it’s been pretty quiet having completed perhaps 15 jobs in the last year or so. My rates are £30-40 p/h depending on if it is a home user or small business. Tasks have ranged range from basic MAC/PC home support like virus/spyware, upgrades, broadband installations, hardware upgrades and general support issues to installing a wired/wireless network infrastructure into a new build home.

About 4 weeks ago I got a call from a representative of a hotel chain opening a new boutique Hotel in Glasgow City Centre. He asked me to come in and see them this morning which I have.
They are looking for someone to support staff and customers using a few Mac's and PC's in the Hotel as well as a couple of printers as and when required. Essentially very basic support, everything else (LAN/WAN) is externally supported by a managed services company and the bulk of print by Xerox.

I envisage that a lot of it can be done remotely either over the phone or using a remote assistance tool however his requirements are that I (or someone working on my behalf) can be available either remotely (if applicable) or actually on-site ideally within 1 hour 7 days a week between the hours of 8am and 11pm.
Based on other Hotels in the group he has estimated that once up and running I may only be required for around 10 hours a month but quite probably more initially as the hotel is brand new with new staff & he has asked me to come up with a quote and get back to him this week.

Being the first contract of this kind I've been asked to quote for I'm really not sure where to start. I don't want to under sell myself but at the same time am afraid if I go in too high I will scare them off. He gave no indication as to what they would expect to pay for this type of support. While I appreciate that it's basic support it's also a lot of hours to be "available" and until 11pm in the evening is what I would class unsociable hours. It would also mean me sourcing 2 or 3 other very flexible people to work for me (at an agreed rate) should I myself not be available (due to my main job).

I'm tempted to offer him up to 20 hours support for the first 3 months at a fixed fee of £800 per month and then review this at the end of this period. However I am worried this may seem like a lot and put them off.
The alternative is to offer them a fixed rate of £30-40 p/h as and when required with a minimum of 1 hour. The downside of this is that it's not a lot of money if I'm only called out a few hours a month but have to be ready at all times with only one hours notice!


Not sure where to go with this, it's a good opportunity... crikey if I could get 6-7 contracts like this I could work for myself full time and earn a very nice wage but at the same time I don't want to be at someones beckon call 8am-11pm for peanuts if I'm only charging hourly as and when required.

Can anyone offer any advice?

Thanks!!

[Scrag Meister]

Don't under estimate the inconvenience factor of the hours that you need to be available for, no popping out for a quick pint, interuptions to family life etc....

I ended up being unofficially permanently on call when a perm a few years ago after a couple of people left.

This lasted for about 10 months, I negotiated a retainer to cover the additional availablity on my main salary (inconvenience factor) AND overtime @ 1.5x, when ever I had to give support (support charge).

So I would suggest a fixed fee for the availablity plus a charge when support was required.

Be as aware as possible re the volume of support that could come in, price for the worst case scenario.

Would be careful with a fixed charge on the support side as this could vary a lot, always a risk I guess of a site visit too.

GL, sounds like an interesting opportunity.

[Zippy]

Sounds good and I think you should go for it.
I'd be inclined to draw up a service level agreement though. You don't want to be called out at 10pm to upgrade their anti-virus software, so you should aim for an agreement whereby you only attend after (say) 7pm if it is a critical failure. Anything else is a next-day service.
Not sure what others think of this but you could charge an hourly fee for being on-call?

Edit: Good luck!

[eek]

Personally I'd go for:-

Fixed rate monthly fee for answering the phone. £400-500 for that.

Hourly rate for fixing the problem. £40 say

You also need the ability to prioritise calls so that you don't need to drop everything unless they really need you to. You only want to do immediate fix for things that need immediate solutions, everything else can wait until the next day by 12 / 5pm.

[Lumiere]

and will probably at some point end up in a permanent position.

sounds like a curse

[stillooking]

Sounds good and I think you should go for it.
I'd be inclined to draw up a service level agreement though. You don't want to be called out at 10pm to upgrade their anti-virus software, so you should aim for an agreement whereby you only attend after (say) 7pm if it is a critical failure.

Not sure what others think of this but you could charge an hourly fee for being on-call?

Edit: Good luck!

I agree, it's probably best to draft an SLA, keep it relatively simple though for everybody to understand.

There are many ways to cut the cake, fixed fee to cover overheads plus a call -out is a good one. Anyway, it sounds like people are coming up with good ideas already.

PM me if you want some more info on SLA drafting

[ChimpMaster]

I support certain aspects of my client's systems on a 24/7 basis, for which I charge a fixed daily standing charge (which is more on weekends) plus an hourly charge equivalent to my actual hourly rate.

Some good points have been made by the posters above - take heed but otherwise sounds like you have a good opportunity to grow a real business here.

[lukemg]

Don't undersell (on-call is a real pain) and make it financially painful to call you out. So - retainer + minimum payment of an hour for any calls that come in + travelling time if you have to go there. Setup as much remote access as possible and if anyone there has any clue, take them under wing as an on-site user who can do a bit. Also, needs to be a decent amount to persuade others to help you out on-call !
Will this also stop you working full-time elsewhere ? factor this in.
If they decide not to take you on, this is better than doing it for peanuts and getting stupid calls at all hours.

[TheAnalyst]

Thanks for all the replies folks, most helpful.

I've just sent the chap an email to clear up a couple of points...

Hi XXXXX,
It was nice meeting you this morning & being shown around.
I've a couple of questions for you regarding the support you have requested.

The check-in kiosks, what system do these run on and are they within the support realm that you require from me? If not can you clear up how such devices would be supported, is there internal support that staff would refer such issues to?

The hours you require support for (8am-11pm, 7 days) is high and this does mean that I personally may not always be available, this being the case I would refer the job to an associate to ensure there's always someone available to respond.
You mentioned that ideally someone would be available within a hour and generally this would not be a problem however I feel it would be beneficial to us both to have a basic Service Level Agreement in place to ensure priority issues are dealt with promptly and jobs that are not so urgent can be dealt with the following day rather than late in the evening, would you agree?

To give you a rate purely for each support hour I feel would be difficult to gauge as if I was only required for, say, 5 hours in one month it's a lot of time to ensure availability for minimal compensation. I would ideally quote in one of the following ways:

• Monthly, quarterly or annual fee for availability and inclusive of an agreed number of support hours per month.
• Monthly, quarterly or annual fee for availability plus support hours @ an agreed rate on top of this.

Does this work for you?

Regards

It's important that this does not effect my full time job in any negative way, at the end of the day that's what's paying the bills at the moment. That said, i've no doubt I could get a list of presentable, flexible & PC/MAC literate individuals together for, say, £25p/h in the event that I'm not available personally. There's scores of ads every day on Gumtree and the likes from newly qualified students that are out of work. If I had a list of 5 people and myself there would always be someone available im sure!

Lets see what he comes back with.

Thanks again, really appreciate the advice.

[Scrag Meister]

could get a list of presentable, flexible & PC/MAC literate individuals together for, say, £25p/h in the event that I'm not available personally. There's scores of ads every day on Gumtree and the likes from newly qualified students that are out of work. If I had a list of 5 people and myself there would always be someone available im sure!

Sounds like Win Win.

5 Students at £15-20 per hour when on an actual call out that you are charging for, you charge £50. Kerching.

And you pocket the annual retention charge with someelse doing all the work.

Keep us posted on progress.