New Siveco China support organization
2011-01-20
We are pleased to announce the new Siveco China support organization! Under preparation for several months already, it is up-and-running as of October 8, 2010.
This organizational change is aimed at better supporting the increasing installed base of our software packages COSWIN and bluebee®, either hosted at the Siveco China datacenter (SaaS model) or at the customer's own facilities. Over 60 customers now use our solutions across around 250 sites: most are located in mainland China, with 9 sites in Southeast Asia and 1 in Africa.
While our support team receives relatively few support calls concerning technical problems — reflecting the stability of our systems — most issues are related to new report requirements, missing or lost documentation and training needs. At the same time, the growing number of customers under our "Enhanced Support Contracts" (which include a guaranteed year-to-year improvement in the usage of the system, annual audits and monthly remote monitoring), require more attention.
This document highlights the major changes. Please relay this information to all related personnel in your organization. Your support contract will be amended at the next renewal, in the meantime please treat this announcement as a commitment of Siveco, part of our contractual responsibility.
Support team
The support organization is under the overall responsibility of Billy Cai, Project Delivery Manager of Siveco China.
Cherry Chen has been specifically appointed to manage the support organization.
Sunny Lei is in charge of the hotline, the manning of which may also be delegated to other members of the support team.
The support team appoints members of the technical team to specific problems, based on the match between the problem and the skills/experience of our engineers. The appointed team member may then cooperate with other technicians to solve the problem.
Third-level support, touching the core of the product, is then provided by our product team, the local Siveco China product team for bluebee® mobile solutions and the French R&D team for COSWIN.
Types of support contracts
The following support contract types are presently available:
| - | Siveco SupportNet Agreement – the usual software support and free upgrade contract |
| - | Siveco Enhanced Support Contracts – inclusive of the above but primarily focused on improving the usage of the system. This is the now the default contract type offered to all our customers, as it has proven to bring much more value to all involved. |
| - | Special support arrangements, such as 24/7 support, are available on a case by case basis for customers with special requirements |
Dedicated Hotline
Support is accessible only through our hotline, either by email or by phone, in order to ensure full traceability of all requests. Calls made to specific Siveco personnel, such as a project manager or consultant you know will normally be redirected to support. Siveco offers no guarantee for calls not placed to the designated support channels.
Support system
Our support system has been upgraded. In addition to our own troubleshooting database, running on COSWIN, the call tracking system has been integrated with our CRM. Hotline and support personnel can now access account details, detailed product information and versions, contracts and all calls in the system. This ensures traceability of all support issues, status and response time, reminders and alarms, as well as management reporting (indicators customer by customer as well as across all our customer base).
Criticality levels
The following levels have been defined, they are agreed mutually between Siveco and customer:
| AA | The system is not working. | Siveco software is not usable, affecting your business or critical activities. No work-around is available. |
| A | Problem with a major functionality. | System operation is severely crippled. A work-around is available. |
| B | Problem with a minor functionality. | The software is not working properly, but the impact on its utilization is not critical. A work-around is available. |
| C | Minor problem. | Minor problems include documentation, translation errors, layout problems, etc. |
Reponse times
All response times are during office hours (9am-6pm) unless special contractual arrangements apply. For all criticality levels:
| - | Acknowledgment (incident number and criticality level provided, appointment of technical staff to the problem) in maximum 2 hours. This ensures you that we are working on your problem. |
| - | Technical answer (for AA criticality level: either a permanent or a temporary solution, for other levels for which a work-around in available: either permanent, temporary solution or detailed information on the activities deployed to solve the problem, with a clear deadline for resolution). |
Expenses are not covered in contracts
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