Cheap telephone systems maintenance is a phrase often heard but rarely defined.

Before trying to explore some of the issues associated with the subject, a quick caveat – keep in mind that what proves to be cheap for someone else may not prove to be cheap for you unless you have taken the trouble to be sure that it is a good match for your requirements.

The definition of maintenance

Strictly speaking, the word maintenance implies routine and regular servicing of your technology to try and avoid problems occurring and thereby keep your system performing at an optimal level.

It is, however, important to remember that routine telephone systems maintenance is only one side of the coin.  You may also need urgent and effective support if you have problems with your system or the worst-case scenario of your system being down.

If you are looking for cheap telephone systems maintenance, it may pay to keep these two elements of the requirements in mind, namely:

• having periodic expert preventative and monitoring maintenance of your system;

• being able to call upon expert diagnostic and remedial services, in the event of a problem.

Different suppliers and different approaches

Unfortunately, some suppliers of small business telephone systems may be capable of sourcing the technology but their ability to support it, once in place, may be limited.

This is not something that you will wish to discover in the event of a crisis with your telephone system.

It may also be typically true that purchasing systems from internationally renowned suppliers, such as Siemens business telephone systems, may reduce your risks of encountering operational problems.

Well known and fully international standards compliant systems, may also be significantly easier for engineers to both maintain and diagnose.

Developing in-house expertise

Some routine maintenance tasks may be perfectly within your capability (or that of one of your colleagues) with a modicum of training.

That may be an extremely cost-effective way of obtaining at least some cheap telephone systems maintenance and reducing your reliance on third party providers, however, some judgment may be required as to when maintenance is realistically within your capability or would be better allocated to a domain expert.

The service level agreement

External providers of telephone systems maintenance who are unable or unwilling to offer guarantees about how quickly they would be able to provide you with support and maintenance in an emergency, may be manifesting a noteworthy lack of confidence in their own abilities.

There is a very significant difference between committing to providing support and maintenance and committing to how and where you will deliver the service and under what conditions.

The quantification or such a supplier’s commitment is called a Service Level Agreement or SLA for short.

If you are looking at providers of cheap telephone systems maintenance, a reluctance on their part to commit to an SLA might be something you may wish to consider as a warning sign.