I need urgent help pricing up a retainer contract

[Technosis]

Hello,

I need some urgent help pricing up a retainer contract.

Site Locations: London (9 Sites), Birmingham (1 Site) and Manchester (1 Site).


The customer is looking for a retainer contract with 27/4 Wi-Fi Network support, and this should include on-site call outs to all sites. No support is required for the end-user devices, just the Wi-Fi infrastructure. I'm based in London and have other customers on retainers within London.

How much would you charge per site on a retainer?
How much would you charge for call-outs?
Would you charge the same call-out rates for Birmingham and Manchester?


A typical site setup will have the following:

1 x small comms cabinet

4 x access points

1 x Network switch

1 x Primary Internet Line

1 x Failover the line


Thank you in advance

[Lance]

if this is the only customer you're doing it for then you MUST overcharge.
With just one customer you don't have the economies of scale to ever make it profitable unless you rip them off. There's plenty of companies with engineers who can cover this geography and they are your competitors.

I wouldn't do this for just one customer. But I would consider taking the contract and paying another firm to do the work.
Either way, get another firm to quote so you can see what the going rate is.

[hobnob]

I think that 24/7 is the easy bit, e.g. you could get another company to act as a virtual receptionist and take phone calls. The tricky bit will be the SLA. E.g. if you've promised to have someone on site within 30 minutes, that won't give you enough time to get from London to Manchester. Similarly, what happens if you have 2 calls at the same time? If the customer is happy for you to send someone round "a week on Tuesday" then that will be easier for you, but they're unlikely to be that patient!

Looking at other support contracts (e.g. for Dell), you pay more as the response time goes down.

[northernladuk]

Sorry can't help with the pricing but are you even able to provide that service? 24/7 with a reasonable SLA for Manchester/Birmingham? Will a customer even accept a call out contract when you live in London? Can you fulfil your obligations and avoid costly legal issues if you can't?

That aside don't forget to get your contract checked for commercial terms. I believe Bauer & Cottrell do commercial terms not just IR35 and there are a few others I forget.