Maintenance Renewal / Support Contract Delivery
As the lead purchaser here at PEI, I handle all technology purchases that you make through your account manager. I also handle all maintenance purchases made through our contract management team. One question that I assume many clients have is, ‘Where does the maintenance go?’ Well this is an interesting question, and the answer is not as simple as you might think.
I generally request that all electronic and physical maintenance documentation / certification be sent to me, so I can pass it along to the appropriate people at PEI for secure storage and documentation. While this doesn’t always happen as smoothly as I would like given our large number of vendors and clients, I find a way to track it down when I don’t get it as expected. An example would be if it is sent directly to who the vendor thinks the end user is. This could backfire if you have a change in your IT director since your last maintenance order with a particular vendor was purchased. They may send your NEW order to your OLD IT manager’s email address and create a web of confusion that we sort out for our clients here at PEI.
The reason that I request this method of delivery and prefer to sort it out on our end is for ease of the end user. When I receive maintenance information, I send it along to the appropriate PEI team members who store the info both physically and electronically, and include all relevant information (certificate numbers, dates of coverage, serial numbers covered, etc) on the end user’s invoice.
Our goal in the front office operations of PEI is efficiency. We handle the quoting, purchasing and receipt of your maintenance information, and try to deliver with pertinent information delivered to the end user via invoice. This creates an easy method for us administrative staff to pull up the information, for the end user to receive it, and to keep end user paperwork at a minimum. Of course, copies of anything are always available with a quick email to your account manager. We can almost always track down certificates within a few hours and have them to you in no time.
-Daniel Mastracco, PEI
