Nobody owns the fix
A fault is reported to the person who sold the system, who forwards it to a developer, who asks what changed. Three people, one question, no owner.
Services
Support and maintenance
The system was built two years ago by someone who has since moved on. It works, until a Tuesday morning when the invoice printer stops and the person who understands the code does not answer. Support is the arrangement that decides what happens in that hour, and it is better agreed in a quiet month than improvised on a bad morning.
Who it is for
- Businesses running software they did not build, with nobody on staff who can read it.
- Teams whose system was delivered by a supplier who is no longer reachable.
- Anyone who was told to send an email and wait, and found out that waiting is not a plan.
Problems it solves
Every fix is a favour
Small repairs happen when somebody has spare time. The list never gets shorter, and the next release carries all of it at once.
The panic arrives unannounced
The month-end report fails at the moment the accountant needs it. Nobody can say whether it happened before, because nobody keeps the record.
Use cases
A support agreement with a written scope
Named systems, named channels, a stated window and a monthly fee. Anything outside the list is quoted separately, which protects both sides.
Fault triage and a ticket log
Every report gets a severity, an owner and a date. The log is visible to you, so 'we are working on it' becomes a row with a timestamp.
A maintenance window
Patching, library updates and certificate renewal on a fixed day each month, announced before it happens rather than after.
Documentation that stays current
The runbook is updated when something changes, so the next person — ours or yours — does not start from zero.
What is in scope
Fixed scope. Fixed price.
Agreed in writing before anything is built. You approve before we start.
- A written support agreement: covered systems, channels, hours and fee
- Fault intake through one channel, with a ticket number you can quote
- A severity scale and a response order agreed before the first fault
- Corrective fixes for faults inside the agreed scope
- Monthly maintenance: patching, library updates, certificate renewal
- A quarterly review of the fault log and the working hours it cost
How it is delivered
- 01
Read the system, then the complaints
Two days with the people who use it and the record of what has broken. We start from what actually fails, not from what the last developer said.
- 02
Write the boundary
One page: what is covered, what is not, how a fault is reported, and during which hours somebody answers.
- 03
Clear the backlog in severity order
Faults that stop work are closed first; the cosmetic ones are batched, so a small repair does not cost a full deployment.
- 04
Review every quarter
A short meeting: what broke, how long it took, what should have been caught. The agreement changes when the system does.
FAQ
Questions about this service.
What owners usually ask before requesting a quote for it.
What is a response window, and do you promise 24/7?
No. A response window is a commercial commitment written into the agreement, with a price that reflects it. Covering business hours is one contract; covering nights and weekends is another, and a small team cannot honestly staff the second without a rota it does not have. We will not print '24/7' on a page and hope it holds.
Who fixes it at 9am on a Saturday?
Whoever is on the agreement's rota, and the agreement states whether Saturday sits inside or outside the window. For retail systems we usually put Saturday inside the covered hours, because that is when the counter trades.
Does support include new features?
No. Support restores the system to the behaviour that was agreed. A new report or a new workflow is a small project, quoted and scheduled. Mixing the two is how a support fee becomes unpredictable.
What if the code is too poor to maintain?
Then we say so in the first month and quote a rebuild instead. A support agreement on a system nobody can change safely is a subscription to the same outage, and we would rather lose the contract than renew it.
Start a project
Want this scoped for your business?
Send the brief. It comes back as a written scope and a fixed quote before anything is built.