Supporting outsourced catering pc

[Jamman960]

We have an outside company cooking our school meals etc, they have an office with a pc which we don’t support, I’d previously been told this cost the school £600/yr for tech support which I figured was a bargain at the time as the chef was far from IT literate and would be more needy than most teachers if we supported her.

 

Now I’m being told we pay £1300/yr and that wouldn’t cover any hardware replacement costs. Is anyone else in a similar boat? We’re an independent school

 

I’ve asked our bursar to find out what is actually covered, they seem to only get phone support so often ask us to “take a quick look” first anyway so we might as well just support the whole lot and save the school some money/provide a better service.

 

From a licensing point of view I guess we’d need to purchase a non edu cal/copy of office rather than use our ovs-Es licensing

[TechMonkey]

I don't understand, if the PC is to support the external company then it is their cost to take and should be part of the cost they charge the school. Having it as an extra you pay seems silly.

Is the external company a little company or a big chain (COMPASS/ACCENT etc)? They should be providing the support structure for their contracts, so pay an MSP to support the sites.

 

Having just spoken to our money people, the only extra we pay for outside the contract is for the equipment, so the PC is our equipment but we have no support requirements or control over it. Now whether this is a monthly lease or we just bought it and slung it in there I don't know. It is not part of our school batch of kit so I can only guess we bought it as a one off at the start of the contract.

[DrBeaker]

I don't understand, if the PC is to support the external company then it is their cost to take and should be part of the cost they charge the school. Having it as an extra you pay seems silly.

Is the external company a little company or a big chain (COMPASS/ACCENT etc)? They should be providing the support structure for their contracts, so pay an MSP to support the sites.

 

Having just spoken to our money people, the only extra we pay for outside the contract is for the equipment, so the PC is our equipment but we have no support requirements or control over it. Now whether this is a monthly lease or we just bought it and slung it in there I don't know. It is not part of our school batch of kit so I can only guess we bought it as a one off at the start of the contract.

 

Had this similar debate before with someone else. They were going to virtualize a server that was nothing to do with us? WHY? For the love of GOD - WHY? Why take on that responsibility when the support fee wasn't going to be any cheaper?

[Sonic007]

We have an external company and I got so fed up with them having issues with their tablet not connecting and asking us for help that I just put in a PC.

One extra mahcine to maintain isnt going to cause major distruption. The cook is happy and we get a free sandwhich every so often.

Happy days.

[localtech]

So true Sonic you never know when you might be hungry and have no cash, I am always ready to help the cooks

[Sheridan]

We have an external catering company and their laptops etc are their responsibility, they're not on our network. We pay them to provide the catering, if they need IT services then they provide them for themselves.

[mikes]

wow we have a catering PC that runs the canteen cashless catering system. I hope our school don't pay for it (no idea if they do or don't) because every time the damn thing goes wrong the canteen staff are straight on the phone to me, and I have to go down and sort it out (often via trial and error)

[Katy]

Ours have their own PC, printer and ADSL (I guess, maybe FTTC) line connecting to their network, but we also provide the kitchen manager with a school PC as he does a lot of work with school functions etc, and it's just easier that way than trying to get remote access to everything working off his catering company PC. All the tills are owned by school too, however all income (from breaktimes or the till in the cafe) from them goes straight to our bank, I guess they just invoice us for the cost of the items and staffing. Lunchtimes the tills just log who has been through and we then work out who to charge via their fees if they aren't on a lunch contract. We're the billed a set amount per person that's been fed.

[bknaggs]

@Katy Sodexo? That setup sounds very similar to what we’ve got here.

[Katy]

@Katy Sodexo? That setup sounds very similar to what we’ve got here.

No, Chartwells (part of Compass), and the tills run software I wrote.

[AlanD]

I, for one, don't understand this. If its an external contract - the school shouldn't face extra charges for maintaining their equipment (...but there again, perhaps the school does maintain the catering equipment)…..but it certainly doesn't support the cooks in preparing food...

 

So yes, on reflection...I can see that the school might adopt a position of supplying and maintaining the PC hardware. But, I fight tooth and nail against sorting out "user" issues....especially if as you suggest that the user ios not that IT literate and hasn't been suitably trained....and if that IT use is part of the job....

[m25man]

In summer the school we currently provide managed services at changed caterers.

I removed the school PC that the previous suppliers had been using as frankly they had been taking absolute liberties demanding administrative access to install software, asking constantly for support from us when they couldn’t get their food labels to print, wanted a school email address and were generally a P.I.A

 

The new incoming team were told, you get a staff filtered Internet connection on your own VLAN that’s it.

They had to supply their own laptop, printer, software and support!

Haven’t heard from them in 4 months...