Maintenance services increase equipment provider businesses

Currently, the majority of companies operating on the local market have their own departments of technical support and rely on post-sales services for the providers of IT equipment.
The situation on the residential segment is even worse, as users often try to fix the damage by themselves.
For corporate clients, service level agreements are usually signed depending on the value of the contract and the size of the client's company.
Equipment producers and vendors usually provide the post-sales technical support to corporate customers. In the case of Xerox Romania, the support and maintenance department has 30 clients, many of them having ten-year-old contracts which are renewed every year.
“We estimate that we will have an annual increase in the number of clients of about 20 percent,” said Razvan Botezatu, Xerox global services manager.
The company's development strategy for the following period focuses on the outsourcing of document management services, which in Romania is split into three areas: office services, high volume document production services, and scanning and archiving services as well as a special services package for special events.
Sistec SBsol, a member of the RTC Group, provides technical support and maintenance services for the IT equipment sold by Diverta and ProCa, as well as for other companies outside the RTC group.
“We have more than 100 corporate clients for support and maintenance IT services, and we expect the number to increase by at least 20 percent in the year to come,” Augustin Dragan, CEO of Sistec SBsol, said.
With a network of 30 locations in Bucharest and the rest of the country, this business line is expected to generate at least EUR 2 million from the total turnover of Sistec SBsol by the end of 2008.
“We have about 150 employees for this service now, but we expect the number to increase to 200 by the end of 2008,” added Dragan.
Konica Minolta Romania also has its own technical support office to offer assistance to its clients; the company has more than 15,000 direct clients, plus another 80 partners. Its technical support department has more than 35 employees with the number increasing depending on the turnover evolution and the department's productivity. The response time for different problems depends on the service level agreement vendors and producers have with each customer and on the location of the customer.
“The local market is currently on its way to a mature level and increasingly companies will choose to outsource the IT support and maintenance services,” Dragan said.
The service department of Xerox Romania has 29 employees for the moment, but the number will increase as the company will add other new clients to its portfolio.
At the end of 2006, Xerox Romania had more than $50 million turnover, 16 percent more compared year on year.

Roxana Mihul