How many of you support others? e.g expanded IT support services

[Guest GarnierSkinNaturals]

So a few questions about how many of you support other schools. So of the questions may seem cheeky or obvious but I just want to see how many of you do it?

 

1) How many of you currently support others? e.g. Other schools, business etc.

2) How did you integrate into this into your current setup?

3) How did you work out charges/legal implications?

4) How did you go about finding places/schools to support?

[synaesthesia]

We do, although it's currently only one primary school, but this will expand to a few more next year due to late starting this year.

It's easy enough to "integrate" - we visit on a fortnightly basis for half a day, it's an RM network so it's easy enough to support. We also have remote access and have not long bought into a very good helpdesk solution which has been working really well, we use it both internally and on the Internet for the primary.

We were a little cheeky, answering the last two questions in one go really. I left a large 3rd party support provider and 13 out of 14 schools I supported instantly asked "Will you're new school be able to let you out for half day a week to support us?"

Unfortunately we could only take on a few; after all primarily I needed to be the techie for our school. As I started there in January, contract terms were a little late so were only able to take on the one school that was definitely leaving them unless I stayed. Charges were worked out twofold: how much did the previous provider charge, how much we could afford to charge whilst still heavily undercutting, and as a lot of the schools around here are RM based, we also had to bear in mind RM's support costs and our fee's for the ATSS scheme. The only real cost on top of that is mileage - we already had public liability insurance anyway.

 

We can probably stretch to another 2 schools next year which will leave us plenty of time and give us a decent income to make up for any loss too. There's a distinct possibility of, depending on interest, expanding further and therefore taking on another member of staff to help but that will all depend on budgets. If we look outside of the schools I used to support, it's pretty much word of mouth already having a reasonable reputation, otherwise it'd just be an email around to the local schools.

[RTFM]

We support a local primary school and this could be developing into more primaries coming with us for support.

 

There could potentially be 12 primaries eventually but more than likely we'll end up with 5 or 6

 

The best way to 'advertise' a service like this, for a secondary school, would be for a head or IT manager from the secondary to go to a primary head's meeting (assuming your feeder primaries have a meeting of this sort....?) and then put the option forward.

 

We basically just ended up charging a lot less than they pay in support as ultimately we want to keep the money within the school system not spend a lot of money on a substandard service.

[Steve21]

1) How many of you currently support others? e.g. Other schools, business etc.

As a school (not me purposonally) we support 7 primaries currently.

 

2) How did you integrate into this into your current setup?

As mentioned above, a lot of it is based on remote connections, and a fortnightly visit (unless anything major happens). Once our new helpdesk is up and running it'll be on that, however currently it's email/phone based, as we pretty much always have someone in the office being a larger team.

 

3) How did you work out charges/legal implications?

Honestly not sure on this one, was sorted before I moved here But there's quite a large contract!

 

4) How did you go about finding places/schools to support?

Most of the primaries are feeder schools for us, few others word of mouth between schools.

 

Steve

[arwen]

I work for the local council, so their are 2 of use to support 1 Academy, 7 Primarys and the surrounding council offices. We are based in the academy and go out to the primarys/offices when they have an issue that we cant fix remotely. They all log jobs through a central IT help desk and we get the jobs assigned to us.

And since its all the council 3 and 4 dont apply.

[GrumbleDook]

I work for an LA and "support" 340+ schools.

 

Ok ... I sort out meetings to tell them what to do.

 

Sometimes they even listen ...

 

I am sure they only turn up for the biscuits and chocolate.

 

[featured_spectre]

1) How many of you currently support others? e.g. Other schools, business etc.

I used to support my school and 2 others on an AdHoc basis

 

2) How did you integrate into this into your current setup?

The school management liaised between each other and I got told that day

 

3) How did you work out charges/legal implications?

Again sorted out by the school management

 

4) How did you go about finding places/schools to support?

They came to us when they saw how smooth our system was running.

[synaesthesia]

I work for an LA and "support" 340+ schools.

 

Ok ... I sort out meetings to tell them what to do.

 

Sometimes they even listen ...

 

I am sure they only turn up for the biscuits and chocolate.

 

 

 

You know that's not true.

 

 

We like the little cakes too.

 

 

BTW sorry for waking you up this morning fella - it was 9:15 though! What do you think this is, school holidays?

[IrritableTech]

We support nine local primary schools. Six of which are our trust schools.

 

Our SLA is a large legal document prepared with professional advise, however we tend to go above and beyond the service which it promises.

 

Charges cover our technician costs, cover for that technician now absent from our school, and the first hour has a small premium to cover travel. To fulfill our SLAs we have a technician out four and a half days out of five.

 

We have built up our business almost entirely on word of mouth. We have a very close relationship within our trust, and this has led to other schools coming to speak to us!

[russdev]

I work for an LA and "support" 340+ schools.

 

Ok ... I sort out meetings to tell them what to do.

 

Sometimes they even listen ...

 

I am sure they only turn up for the biscuits and chocolate.

 

 

cheat....

 

Ok if we are doing that then think might beat you by a few