IT maintenance that is better and more cost effective than that offered by the major manufacturers and resellers

• Why do I need  the PGMS Laptop and Desktop Multi-Site Service (LDMS) ?

LDMS is one of the many different services PGMS provides. It is specifically designed to meet the needs of professionals who utilise their PC's/Laptops on a daily basis and would be severely inconvenienced both financially and operationally if they experienced prolonged downtime due to a hardware fault.

• Is this service available and suitable for individuals as well as larger organisations ?

Yes PGMS is happy to provide the service to organisations or individuals, we also have additional services that are available please browse through our website for more information.

• What PC's/Laptops do you support ?

We support almost all PC's/laptops. Due to the fact the way Apple and Sony (VIAO range) deal with Independent Maintainers we currently have to sub-contract this service back to the manufacturers, however because we do a high volume of business with Apple we may well be able to purchase the support cheaper than an individual. We are constantly reviewing Apple support and will launch a non subcontracted service should volumes of requests demand.

• How much would this service cost from the likes of PC manufacturers of technology stores ?

They do not offer a service like LDMS or if they do we can't find it. So lets take a look at an example. One of our offerings is a 8CTF (call to fix or replace), 365 days a year on a 24 hour basis for £123 (List Price). To our knowledge we are the only company to offer a multi site service that gives this level mainland UK wide cover. HP's post warranty service costs £158 per year (List Price) and that is a next day on-site, mon-fri business hours. It is “response only” there is no guaranteed fix or replacement.  Also as opposed to other companies we have a UK call centre with published numbers for escalation.

Manufacturing companies will offer to extend the initial warranty for up to four years but this is loaded into the purchase price and it still does not match our costs after tax. Additionally it is treated as a capital cost and therefore can only be reclaimed over a five year write down period.

Lastly as we have demonstrated in our examples above, our LDMS service is cheaper and offers a far better level of service than manufacturers warranties on a pure price comparison by some 50%. But the real advantage is our ability to provide a fix or replacement that significantly reduces your exposure to costly business downtime and the financial and operational penalties therein.

• What is different about LDMS from extended warranties I can buy when I purchase my PC ?

Primarily the main difference is that no one else gives the level of service LDMS provides for the cost. Most manufacturing companies will offer one year warranty services as standard with options to upgrade to multi year. We have yet to find one that is not “response only”, and that covers anything more than standard business hours (9:00am-17:00pm, five days a week, excluding bank holidays and weekends). “Response only” means exactly that, as long as they are responding in some way they are fulfilling their non guaranteed obligation. A “response” can be anything from a confirmation that the call is being processed or assessed to a courier picking the PC up to take it away for repair. At best this will fix your PC within three elapsed working days though more than often it will take weeks. Our LDMS service gives a service level agreement (SLA), to fix or replace the laptop or desktop within for example eight hours from time of call logging. In some locations we will commit to a four hour fix.  We achieve our targeted SLA's 98% of the time. Our service is provided to you where ever you are in the UK whether in at a clients, your office, at home or on holiday. Please see the SLA matrix below.

l       Why don't I just buy a new one if my PC or Laptop goes wrong ?

You can if you wish but it will be very expensive in contrast to our LDMS service. A half usable Laptop will cost in the region of £650+, any thing below this is likely to be sub standard for business needs. Our advice is that if you buy a high spec business desktop or laptop it will last at least five to six years, the cheaper models will not last that long, and will end costing the same or more than buying a properly configured business PC. The lowest figure we can find for failure rates for laptops is on average 22%. In the United States a recent 2009 survey reports an average chance of failure of 43% in the first two years. Our LDMS service allows you to have a stable five to six years of worry free computing, which is the same as the useful life of a good quality business laptop. This gives the person who takes up the LDMS service a 50% cost benefit over the “buy another one” route.

It is much more important to consider the cost and impact to your business.

Lets take a typical professional such as an Accountant, Solicitor or Barrister who will have say average fees of £250 per hour. Given that you probably spend at least 2-4 hours or 50% of your time on average on your PC a day, then one days down time has a more than probable negative impact of £1,000. Now multiply this number by taking the best case for a warranty fix of three days, you have accrued a negative business impact of £3,000 (best case). The average time for a laptop to be fixed under warranty is ten days if you use this as the multiplier the negative business impact is £10,000.

This method of calculation can be modified for most businesses, just set your hourly cost of downtime. If you or your business are reliant on your desktop or laptop either to generate revenue or you use it for day to day business operations, then there will be a cost of downtime through hardware faults. 

 Our LDMS service with a 8CTF (that means we will fix or replace within 8 hours of you logging the call with us) costs £10.25 a month before TAX and £6.15 month after TAX as it is and operational expense and therefore can be claimed back as operating costs. This cost is covered by three minutes work using the £250 per hour figure. This figure of £6.15 is miniscule compared to the cost of business downtime even if you set your hourly rate to £10. 

l     Will you replace/restore my data and applications ?

We will help and advise but it is not possible to do within this service. It must fall to the end user to backup their data and applications as everyone's PC and it's software configuration is unique. We give guidance to our customers who are under contract as part of the information pack that comes with the service. Before you decide on the best approach for you, it is worth considering how and where you store your data. Most people will store business and personal data in the same user account for example family photographs, music and business documents. This is not a good idea as pictures and music take up a lot of space and therefore make backing up a user account a very time consuming and onerous task. So keep personal and business data separate.

l     Does this service cover my battery and other items not integral to my PC  or Laptop ?

No manufacturer warranties or services of this type cover consumables or non integral items, which a battery is considered as.

l     How will I use the replacement PC or Laptop if I do not have applications ?

Firstly the replacement PC will always be provided with an operating system such as XP or Vista, this will allow you to access the internet. You can then restore your applications or data from your backup. If you do not have the installation media or license keys to hand you can download OpenOffice suite. OpenOffice is free software and allows you to create and edit Microsoft and Adobe programs of all versions. 

It is important that you store all installation media, license keys and communication settings in a safe place. A link to the OpenOffice site is given below.

http://OpenOffice

l       You mention a replacement PC or Laptop, what is the procedure ?

We will provide you with a like for like or equivalent PC should we be unable to fix your PC within the chosen SLA. If we still can not fix the PC we will provide you with a like for like or equivalent if the model is no longer available for you to keep.