SAP has launched a new premium support service, but
analysts have questioned whether the 5% premium on the enterprise
software supplier’s standard support fee is good
value.
The new offering is designed to fit midway between the company’s
standard support service and MaxAttention, a high-end service which
includes a permanent on-site support team.
SAP Standard Support is the basic support service, which has an
annual charge of 17% of the net licence fee. It covers continuous
improvement, quality management, knowledge transfer and issues
resolution.
The new Premium Support (charged at 22% of net licence) adds a
guaranteed service-level agreement covering response time and
corrective action for high priority (Level 1) support calls; an
annual assessment to identify potential improvements to the SAP
setup, and a support advisor who acts as a single point of contact
for support issues.
Gartner analyst Yvonne Genovese said, “In some cases, users can
obtain the same or equivalent support for new or established
implementations without purchasing the packaged solution.”
Derek Prior, research director at AMR Research said, “Having a
single point of contact is useful for users running multiple
applications in mySAP.”
However, he said, while SAP users were happy with Level 1 and 2
support, they found that lower priority support calls (Level 3 and
Level 4) were less satisfactory.