Thursday, April 01, 2004
Grumble, grumble.
I hate April Fool’s Day. I mean, I really hate it. It annoys the hell out of me that I’m supposed to spend my day trying to figure out whether or not people are fucking with me. I suppose I’m just a big ol’ party-pooper, but I can’t spare the mental energy right now, m’kay?
Apologies to the rest of the BFL, but the blogrolling blogroll is coming down. I’m sick and tired of my page taking an eon to load every time blogrolling craps out, which seems to be most every afternoon now. Of course, nearly everyone uses blogrolling, so none of y’all’s pages will load, either. I suppose it’s a good thing, since I get more housework done when looking at blogs gets to be too much of a pain in the ass.
It’s now supposed to precipitate only 4 of the next 10 days, but one of those days they’re predicting snow. Global warming, my ass.
If you are or are still having trouble commenting here, please let us know. I’m quite exasperated with this little quirk that seems to have developed, and the sooner we track it down, the better.
Hmm. I think I feel better now. Anybody have any random gripes? If so, feel free to drop ‘em in the comments. This post is already grouchy, so why not grump here? I’m gonna go have some chocolate or something. Heh.
Er, right.
I remember now...we’ve got this blog thing that we’re supposed to post to.
I hate days like today, when it’s so dark outside that you need the lights on inside. It’s just rainin’ right along. Bleh. Of course, this on a day when I need to hurry up and get some stuff done around the house, ‘cause tonight we’re goin’ to the Krispy Kreme. This should not excite me nearly as much as it does, but does highlight the fact that one of the joys of being pregnant is being able to blame your cravings on the baby. Heh.
I think I was going somewhere with this, but I don’t have the faintest idea where…
BusinessPundit Outage
BusinessPundit Rob tells me his host is having server problems with the one he’s hosted on, which lately have seemed to recur each morning.
They are working on it, so let’s hope he will be up soon! If it’s not fixed satisfactorily in a few more days, he may be in the market for a new web host.
Hourly Versus Fixed Fee
I got a call last night from a distant cousin; my great grandmother’s sister’s granddaughter, if I have the lineage straight. They are ditching the computer guy used by the company she works for, and seeing if I might be interested. I’ll pop down to the place tomorrow, since there is no time today, to check things out and discuss it.
All of which brought up an interesting question about support services. The guy who couldn’t be bothered to come there any time soon when they experienced problems with their server was on a fixed monthly fee. You pay X amount, we take care of you. The guy they had before that just charged them by the hour, which is what I have up until now been doing.
However, a former partner and I had been discussing the idea of generic service contracts for law firms (or whoever) for fixed monthly fees, depending on number of computers. We’d do regular checkups, and be on call for support questions and emergencies. At least up to a certain limit, and the devil is in such details. I’m paranoid about getting stuck with contracts that pay less than they should for the work involved. Which ought to be less of a problem if there are lots of them to average things out, but still. By the same token, it gives clients predictability and peace of mind, and us a predictable base revenue stream.
I am currently discussing the idea of a fixed monthly fee for support services with a new law firm client, so it has been on my mind.
My traditional preference is for hourly billing. That way if you foolishly get a virus because you won’t pay for antivirus software and your employees are gullible no matter how many times we warn them what not to do, and it takes 90 hours to clean up after it, your bill for the month is, say, $7200 more than it would have been. Rather than my business absorbing that much extra work for no extra money beyond, perhaps, calculating in a few hundred a month on average that predicts sooner or later such a scenario will happen with a client of that size.
Interestingly, my cousin says they hate the monthly fixed fee arrangement. They can sometimes go several months without a problem, and were happy to pay the previous guy by the hour, apparently a similar rate to what I an most such people charge, when he was needed. It helps that they are more self-sufficient than some. She speaks freely of mapping drives, for instance, yet I have a client of sixty people where only one understands the concept of mapping network drives. Her computer supplements the server by running a corporate edition of antivirus that pushes definitions to other machines twice a day and enforces complete weekly scans. All stuff the computer guy doesn’t have to worry about as a matter of course.
There are pros and cons for both me and prospective clients to both ways of charging for services. What makes the most sense to you? Any suggestion for gotchas to avoid when creating a fixed monthly fee plan?
I have to go, but perhaps I will revisit this topic soon.
CotC Reminder
Just a reminder that Crazy Pundit is hosting Carnival of the Capitalists this week.
Due to the time difference of 13 hours from eastern time, he has set a cutoff of noon eastern Saturday for entries. As usual, please put something like “CotC” in the subject so they are obviously not spam or other, less important mail, and send them as always to capitalists -at- elhide.com.
I may have little else for you today, so I hope Deb feels inspired. I expect to be busy at the office, even before my partner gets there to work on his taxes and a hotfix this afternoon.