Our Services
Service Plan
Methodology

Our Services

Business landscapes are continuously changing, with the continuous emergence of newer and better technologies. As a result, managing IT and application maintenance to keep in step with the changes can prove quite challenging.

Surveys of IT spend indicates that organizations spend up to 70% of their IT budget on non-discretionary costs — in other words, costs to maintain current IT functionality and operations. Therefore, it is imperative that the costs of IT management and application maintenance becomes more effective and efficient, thus providing your business the edge to compete. 

Our services include:

·         Portfolio Analysis to ensure Business - IT alignment 
·         Offshorability Analysis 
·         Maintainability Analysis and 
·         Application Support through

o        Help Desk
o        Telephone and Remote assistance
o        Desk-side assistance
o        Server management
o        Application and database assistance
o        Service management
o    Application Maintenance  

 

For providing the above services we have suite of pricing packages that meet your needs

Help Disk

Puma Technologies representatives take ownership of your IT requests - it's integral to the personal service we deliver.

Whether you need advice with a Microsoft application or you need help with an IT problem, an Puma Technologies representative will take ownership of your query to get you up and running as soon as possible.

Telephone & Remote assistant

Puma Technologies knows the important role that IT plays in a small business; this is why we bend over backwards to fix your IT problems the same day.

When you need IT assistance straight away, rest assured that advice from Puma Technologies is only a phone call away. You will receive a response to your IT query within 15 minutes with Puma Technologies telephone hotline.

The service representative who returns your call will already be familiar with your IT set-up and network configuration and will have already thought through potential solutions to your problem. We can also take remote control of your machine, so we are virtually 'on-site' at all times.

Desk-side assistant

If our Telephone Assistance is unable to resolve the IT problem - or if you prefer to tackle your problem face to face, Puma Technologies will send one of our Service Representatives to the site to walk you through the IT dilemma in person. 
Desk-side services include: 
Call-out:: We'll be onsite within four hours for an urgent request or the next business day if the problem is not impacting your productivity.
Scheduled:: Your business may wish to schedule regular half or full-day visits during which we will work together through a planned list of tasks.

Server Management

Servers are the backbone of any organisation that uses IT. When a server is down, it can seriously affect productivity and the wellbeing of your business, costing you time and money. Puma Technologies provides a proactive management service for your server(s).

By monitoring your servers regularly - performing daily back-ups, analysis, housekeeping and virus checks, Puma Technologies will help to prevent potential problems that cause down-time and frustration for your users. We even visit your office each month to complete a healthcheck out of office hours.

Application & Database Assistant

Puma Technologies services include general day-to-day support for software applications and databases - if you're stuck, we are here to help. You may have a system developed in the past by someone who has left your company. We can learn this system and provide you with ongoing development and support.

Service Management

As a value-add to our clients, Puma Technologies manages your IT service, so you always know the status of your service and have a one stop shop for all of your IT needs. Service management provides account management; inventory of all hardware and software; procurement; and proactive advice.

Application Maintenance

Our services improve the quality of existing applications to industry standard requirements and boost uptime. We assume full responsibility for your software systems, ensuring that they are fully operational and responsive to your company's rapidly changing needs and emergencies. Routine maintenance such as modifications, enhancements, and documentation are cost-efficiently handled offshore in our development centers.

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Service Plan

We customize our services according to each client’s special needs by employing flexible service models drawn from our experience helping our clients outsource software services. 

The various packages offered by Puma Technologies to meet various support needs of the customer are as mentioned below – 

1.      Fixed price

2.      Time and Material (T&M) pricing

3.      Case based Pricing 

In fixed price contracts the vendor charges a fixed fee for its software development services which is usually negotiated before the start of the project. In such contracts, the vendor effectively bears most the risk and therefore expects a relatively higher price from the client. The client, in return may be willing to pay a higher price because the vendor assumes most of the risk associated with delivering the project on time and within costs; these contracts reduce the clients’ need for behavioral monitoring of the vendor. The vendor, however, has an incentive to execute the projects more efficiently since any cost reduction through greater efficiencies will straight away get reflected in improved margins for the vendor. Therefore, the nature of the contract, and the attendant risks and incentives associated with it, will have an important bearing on the marginal value and price in these arrangements.

The Indian Software industry has tended to broadly employ both Fixed Price and Time and Material contracts. This yields the variance to examine the relationship between the relative allocation of risk between the client and the vendor and the ultimate price of the project.

Fix Pricing

Fixed pricing is a pricing model designed as an alternative to straight Time & Materials (T&M) pricing. The Case-based model limits risk for both parties and ensures a level of control and predictability in an unpredictable support environment.  

What is Covered Under Case-based Support?
Case-based support covers nearly all support events, for example break/fix events, enhancements to an application or web site, device rule changes, or DNS changes.  

Process

• When a support case is requested, Puma Technologies determines whether or not the work can be completed in the defined time, say two hours. Sometimes this entails starting the case in good faith.

• If it can, Puma Technologies does the work and that work is counted as one case. If the case will take more than two hours to complete, we notify you and request approval to proceed. When approved the case rate is voided, and you are billed T&M for the entire case. The "customer approval" hour threshold can be raised depending on the nature of the support requests.

• Cases that convert to T&M are not counted against the monthly case commitment.

• Additional cases are available, in any month, at an established case rate, without initiating additional paperwork.

• Unused cases do not carry over into subsequent months.

• Under this model, a customer commits to a specified number of support "cases" per month at a greatly reduced, fixed rate, and Puma Technologies provides value of up to four times your commitment—every month.

Benefits

• Limited Risk

• Customer's risk is limited to the reduced, per-case cost for the number of cases included in the support plan.

• Puma Technologies' risk is limited to the agreed upon time of any single case.

• Customer & Puma Technologies approval are built in to control spending.

• Predictable, Controllable Costs

• Customer support costs are predictable and controllable.

• Puma Technologies can provide stand-by labor for any customer contingency.

• Flexible & Scalable

• Customer chooses the plan that best meets their needs.

• Customer is not limited to any amount or type of support.

• Case floor can be raised with 30 days notice.

 T&M Pricing

In Time and Materials (T&M) contracts, We provide services at a pre-negotiated rate for every person-day of effort expended on the project and receive payment either at the end of the project or at periodic intervals when certain project milestones are reached. By doing so, we are usually protected against any cost or schedule over-runs linked to changes in client specifications. To reduces our customers risk of overrun we upfront negotiate on the price per person-day and the budgeted person- days.  

What is Covered Under T&M Support?
T&M support covers nearly all support events, for example break/fix events, enhancements to an application or web site, device rule changes, or DNS changes. The support professional is dedicated to the customer work and hence there is no need to agree upfront on scope, time etc.  

Process

• When a support is requested, Puma Technologies’s account manager will contact customer representative to understand the nature of work.

• Once work is understood and agreed between customer and Puma Technologies account manager a proposal will be submitted specifying the approach and cost

• Once contract is signed Puma Technologies resources will be on board at customer premises or ODC’s and start working on the work assignment specified by customer.

• Any request for increase or decrease in team is handled through account manager dedicated for customer account.

• Invoicing to the work done will be done as per terms and conditions agreed in the contract.

Benefits

• Flexibility

• Customer's benefit from using the resources as per customer’s requirements and priorities.

•  Puma Technologies's risk is limited to the agreed upon resources and their man-day rates.

• Customer & Puma Technologies’s approval are built in to control spending.

• Predictable, Controllable Costs

• Customer support costs are predictable and controllable.

• Puma Technologies can provide stand-by labor for any customer contingency.

Case-Based Pricing

Case-based technical support is a technical support model designed as an alternative to straight Time & Materials (T&M) pricing. The Case-based model limits risk for both parties and ensures a level of control and predictability in an unpredictable support environment.  

What is a Case?
A "case" is any single, discrete support event that can be resolved by Puma Technologies in a specific, defined amount of time or less.  

What is Covered Under Case-based Support?
Case-based support covers nearly all support events, for example break/fix events, enhancements to an application or web site, device rule changes, or DNS changes.  

Process

• When a support case is requested, Puma Technologies determines whether or not the work can be completed in the defined time, say two hours. Sometimes this entails starting the case in good faith.

• If it can, Puma Technologies does the work and that work is counted as one case. If the case will take more than two hours to complete, we notify you and request approval to proceed. When approved the case rate is voided, and you are billed T&M for the entire case. The "customer approval" hour threshold can be raised depending on the nature of the support requests.

• Cases that convert to T&M are not counted against the monthly case commitment.

• Additional cases are available, in any month, at an established case rate, without initiating additional paperwork.

• Unused cases do not carry over into subsequent months.

• Under this model, a customer commits to a specified number of support "cases" per month at a greatly reduced, fixed rate, and Puma Technologies provides value of up to four times your commitment—every month.

Benefits

• Limited Risk

• Customer's risk is limited to the reduced, per-case cost for the number of cases included in the support plan.

• Puma Technologies' risk is limited to the agreed upon time of any single case.

• Customer & Puma Technologies approval are built in to control spending.

• Predictable, Controllable Costs

• Customer support costs are predictable and controllable.

• Puma Technologies can provide stand-by labor for any customer contingency.

• Flexible & Scalable

• Customer chooses the plan that best meets their needs.

• Customer is not limited to any amount or type of support. 

• Case floor can be raised with 30 days notice.

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Methodology

Puma Technologies’s approach to transitioning will reduce the timescales, maximise offshoring and minimise the intrusion on customer staff.

• Minimise transition time and cost

• Make the transition as non-intrusive as possible

Transition Approach 

• Puma Technologies proposes to carry out the Transition at both Onsite and Offshore to help minimise the cost and reduce the transition period.

• For the applications to be transitioned offshore

• The onsite team would provide help in terms of

• set up access to application environment

• Identify CUSTOMER resources required for transition

• Collect and send the available documentation to offshore team

• Coordinate with CUSTOMER support staff to resolve the queries of the offshore transition team

• PUMA TECHNOLOGIES proposes to make extensive use of net meetings and audio conferencing to help offshore team communicate effectively with the CUSTOMER Support team

• ‘Cross-pollination’ is another feature of PUMA TECHNOLOGIES strategy where after the transition phase; there will be an exchange of resources between onshore and offshore teams to ensure appropriate resource mix and synergies across PUMA TECHNOLOGIES teams in UK and India.

Transition will be undertaken in 4 phases:

1.       Pre-transition
2.       Knowledge Transfer
3.       Shadowing
4.       Steady state operation

Transition Phase

PUMA TECHNOLOGIES understands that Knowledge Transfer of the transitioned applications is the key to the success of the entire project. PUMA TECHNOLOGIESTransition Methodology caters to this all-important need through the following specific steps: 

Pre Transition

• A joint Program Initiation Workshop (PIW) with CUSTOMER (Initiate Program)

• Study of system and related documentation

• Study of system metrics such as fault/call volumes by priority, SLA etc.

• Raising questions to the existing team using the preliminary transition questionnaire

• Prepare detailed Transition Plan

Knowledge Transfer

• Raising questions to the existing team using the detail transition questionnaire

• Preparing/amending documentation to retain captured knowledge

• Presenting back the application knowledge to Customer team to identify and fill potential gaps

Shadowing

Shadowing the existing team to get ‘hands-on’ experience, primary responsibility remains with the existing team. PUMA TECHNOLOGIES transition team during this phase would

• Fix defects of all or a selected set or priority of defects

• Handle day to day operations related to operations support, production support, system administration where applicable

• Interact with customer/end user interfaces as part of the changeover of responsibilities

• Interact with other third parties for ongoing support and dependencies, wherever applicable

• Prepare documentation for existing applications, as part of the changeover process

• Continuously interact with customer SME’s for revalidating knowledge assimilated on applications, processes, methodologies, tools & techniques

Quality gates for successful knowledge transfer and shadowing

The successful completion of the transition is signalled by the achievement of a set of mutually accepted criteria that serve as quality gates for progressing from the “Knowledge Transfer” phase to the “Shadowing” phase.

Ongoing support 

• Having the existing team shadow PUMA TECHNOLOGIES team, PUMA TECHNOLOGIES has primary responsibility with CUSTOMER team in support

• PUMA TECHNOLOGIES project manager and customer project manager will carry out activities as specified in the handover checklist. 

• The handover record will be signed by both customer project manager and PUMA TECHNOLOGIES project manager.

• Receiving of problem ticket, recovery and resolution of the application.

• SLA - Puma Technologies measures various project metrics to track the SLA relating to a project. Both product and the process metrics are measured and tracked.

A diagram showing methodology is to be pasted here.

Deliverables

The following table gives Transition deliverables:

Enhancements

In today's global, Internet-enabled economy, change impacts your business at the speed of light. Puma Technologies enhances the real-time performance of critical applications, allowing you to pass the cost benefits directly to the bottom line.

Puma Technologies has perfected its maintenance methodology, using state-of-the art software tools for maintenance, quality assurance and project management.

Effective workforce management ensures low overheads and quick ramp-up of a flexible team size that can meet tight deadlines. 

Puma Technologies's Change Management procedures help increase service availability and IT efficiency by reducing the number of unnecessary changes and ensuring that changes are properly tracked, propagated and executed.

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