I.T. Asset Management & Preventive Maintenance

Management FAQ

• What’s in it for The V-Group?

Quite simply The V-Group has one objective in researching, developing, and offering our MMP. We have recommitted ourselves to providing you with the best possible support to help you take advantage of technology and grow your business. We believe that if we help you grow, you help us to grow. Our MMP is not just a new service offering, it is an evolved way of thinking about customer service and support for your technology infrastructure. This new approach doesn’t just help you, it helps eliminate the inevitable chaos that often occurs when several clients call with sever system errors that brings their business to a grinding halt. With proactive monitoring tools in place, we will have fewer moments of surprise, in turn making ourselves more available for those exponentially fewer disasters.

• Are there any restrictions?

There are some restrictions which are necessary to maintain our equilibrium of profit and loss. Should the list below change for any reason, all MMP clients will be notified by mail.

• There is a minimum six (6) month enrollment period for all new MMP clients. Our research shows that this is the length of time for both parties to extract full value of the MMP Service Agreement and not walk away empty handed.
• There is a mandatory evaluation and baseline implementation fee at commencement of services. The cost of this evaluation and baseline implementation is the exact cost of the first month’s retainer and will must be paid in two (2) phases – 50% for Evaluation prior to work and 50% Baseline Implementation upon completion of work.
• Because the MMP is a retainer for service much like what an accountant or attorney would receive, payments must be paid on or before the 1st day of each month for which service is to be rendered.
• Unlike Moves/Adds/Changes, the retainer for Support and Maintenance must be paid in advance. Simply put, this allows us to re-prioritize all paying customers before those who haven’t paid and may suddenly encounter an emergency which could unfairly impact a punctual customer. Our absolute goal is customer satisfaction and we would be doing anyone justice to schedule and maintain a later customer before the needs of a punctual client.
• Although you can cancel at anytime after the initial six (6) months, there will not be any partial credit for a partial month of service. We will gladly discontinue all service at the conclusion of the month. This would allow us to prepare any necessary turn-over documentation to you for security purposes.
• Unless the situation requires an on-site visit all 1st, 2nd and 3rd level support issues will initially be handled remotely whenever possible. This allows us to remain highly available for all clients.
• MMP clients and their staff/employees and management must adhere the MMP guidelines which would require all users to either e-mail our helpdesk at support@thevgroup.com, call our main office at 818.240.9569 and select option for support (the menus may change, please listen carefully) or reach us by instant message/chat. At no time during normal business hours should decide to call any technician or V-Group employee or manage on their cell phones directly for technical support questions and concerns. We worked very hard to make ourselves highly available to you by phone or e-mail, which includes emergencies. Please give us the opportunity to address your issue with the necessary priority level and urgency. We have prepared a carefully considered SLA (Service Level Agreement) to ensure that all calls get routed and handled in the order of priority they were received.
• The client and its staff and management will agree to use the V-Group after hours support number to request support before 7:30am M-F, after 5:30 M-F, weekends and holidays. This number will be set to call the duty technician as the first response to their request.
• At no time, does the V-Group MMP cover any service or support for items or questions for any and all custom business applications provided to the client by the V-Group, such as ACCPAC, SBT, PROWASTE any Custom Web Development or other personalized software designed specifically for the client’s business. Those items are covered by a separate Maintenance Agreement.
• Should a client reject any recommendations that the V-Group or one of its technicians should make without an acceptable option, the V-Group reserves the right not to include the machine in question under the MMP.
• Clients may also be required to adhere do the following list of minimum standards:

• An adequate DSL speed of over 1mb down and 786 up
• Reasonably new server (less than 2 years old) with sufficient disk space, memory and CPU to handle the current workload – a report will provided to document this finding
• Reasonable Desktops and Laptops (less than 2 years old) with sufficient disk space, memory and CPU to handle the current workload – a report will provided to document this finding
• Adequate routers/firewalls/switches (less than 2 years old) with sufficient disk space, memory and CPU to handle the current workload – a report will provided to document this finding
• Adequate backup solution – we will definitely recommend our solution because of how well it handles backups and restorations, however, we will consider your backup at time of discovery and advise you accordingly
• Reasonably good quality network/Ethernet cabling and data jacks - These cables are essential to an efficiently running network and cannot be neglected
• Software compliance will be recommended should there be any licensing discrepancies

• Why should I make this change?

There are many reasons a company (big or small) should make a move like this at least for recommended period of six (6). The least of which is you can take advantage of our If you are a business who is fully aware of your IT budget and you have kept good records, you should simply consider your costs over the last 3 years to our MMP pricing. If you have no idea what your IT budget was over the past couple of years, you should take our customer awareness survey at http://thevgroup.com/business/itsurvey.htm. Upon completing this survey you will have a much cleared understanding of how your business uses technology and the role it plays for you. Once you know this, you can use our pricing calculator below to evaluate your priorities.
You will also, be able to set aside a certain budget for this fiscal year and not have to worry about a sudden disaster which might affect your advertising budget. Don’t let that happen to you. Isn’t it frustrating to look at your P&L and realize you could have prevented that spike in IT expenditures? You will also, have the peace of mind of know that since The V-Group benefits by minimizing your downtime, which reduces our overhead, you will always be presented with the solutions and settings which the most sense in terms of correctness and proper configurations.

• Can you give me any guarantees?

We guarantee peace of mind in knowing that we cannot afford to make mistakes in your office or we will quickly lose our profit. If we do make a mistake, it is covered anyway. Since you are not bound to any contract for the first six month after the initial implementation you can always stop the service. And, since we want to keep your business and maintain your system availability, we will work hard to keep your business.

• Why should I change over when my IT costs are less than the MMP?

I would recommend that you carefully calculate your IT costs from the past three years. If you have that information available you will be able to quickly see the savings. If you realize numbers that are over 10% less than that of our MMP, then you should consider all of the variables. Do the savings outweigh the benefits? If so, then we ask that you at least keep us in mind for the future.
It is also important to mention that with the MMP you are receiving a substantial savings on our normal hourly rate. This savings alone could easily make up the savings if you plan on growing or adding to your existing environment.