Guarantee year-to-year improvement in the utilization of your CMMS!

Software maintenance contracts, charged anywhere between 15-25% of license price (depending on suppliers’ practices and their specific market segment), are still not well accepted in China. Customers are reluctant to pay for bug fixes (“if your software has bugs, you should repair them for free”) and perhaps even more reluctant to pay an ongoing fee for software that works well (“your software is working well, we don’t need maintenance!”).

On the other hand, we found customers are more than happy to pay for what they perceive as really valuable, such as emergency services onsite (they are used to pay for such services for equipment maintenance), new functionality in the software, additional configuration or expert services, such as maintenance management consulting.

In many ways, we understand our customers’ reservations… In the beginning of year 2009, the Siveco China team initiated a revamp of our service offering. Based on the growing success of our maintenance assessment practice (also known as “audits” although the term is sometimes misunderstood and we have come to prefer “assessment”), which enables our customer to identify clear, measurable, improvement opportunities, the idea of the “Enhanced Maintenance Contract” was born.

This offer packages two previously available services (annual maintenance assessments and traditional software support contracts) into one annual contract.

The objective of the contract is to provide a measurable improvement in the utilization of COSWIN, on a year-to-year basis. This improvement is guaranteed by Siveco and measured jointly with customer at the end of the year.

It principle is simple: Siveco experts will visit customers’ site at least once during the year for a system assessment. This assessment will be followed by clear recommendation and improvement proposals by Siveco, with measurable objectives to be obtained. During the following year, Siveco will remotely monitor progress and advise customers on actions to be taken. At the end of the period, another assessment will be conducted to confirm results obtained and decide actions for the next period.

The main condition is that customer should provide remote access to its COSWIN database and reports to the Siveco back-office team, for the entire duration of the contract. Siveco will sign all the necessary confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements. The customer obviously commits to do its best to follow Siveco recommendations.

Traditional software maintenance, which includes bug fixes, access to upgrades, the 400-hotline and end-user support, is offered to all customers under this enhanced contract.

This service package is currently charged at 25% of total license price before discount (this price may be reviewed next year) i.e. it is much cheaper than purchasing the various services separately.

Our first Enhanced Maintenance Contract was signed in July 2009. As of November 2010, 26 plants are covered by this contract. A dedicated maintenance engineer, working together with our support team (in charge of hotline and software services) and our assessment team (in charge of onsite assessments), is taking care of remote monitoring of customers’ databases.

The largest customer currently under the plan is papermaker International Paper (14 sites). Other customers include Ensival-Moret (and their own customers, mostly large chemical plants using the system to monitor pump maintenance), Beijing Oriental Plaza, SITA Waste Services.

Benefits from this service are almost immediate, the initial audit allowing customers to identify clear improvement opportunities and to prioritize them. The monthly follow-up quickly addresses issues, with our engineers coaching users on the phone. This approach puts constant pressure on improvement and helps motivate the entire team.

Benefits can be summarized as:

- Rapid increase in the utilization of the CMMS
- Monthly recommendations with remote coaching by Siveco expert
- Guaranteed results, measured at the end of the period
- Clear value compared to traditional software support contracts

The Enhanced Maintenance Contract applies to any Siveco software, i.e. both COSWIN and bluebee^®, but, as it is focused on utilization rather than the software itself, can also be extended to non-Siveco CMMS (in which case, Siveco is not responsible for software maintenance).

Based on this early success, the Enhanced Maintenance Contract is now proposed as the default support contract to every customer.

For more information, please contact us at info@sivecochina.com.

Tags： CMMS、improvement、support