Looking for a MAS90 phone support plan? Here’s an overview video from Sage Sage Software that tries to sell you on the benefit of their phone and basic maintenance plans.
This raises an interesting question about vendor help desk support and the support offered by a local experienced consultant.
Should your company use a local source of support? Or should you contract with a software vendor’s help desk to answer all of your accounting software technical questions?
Here are my summarized thoughts (feel free to take issue with any or all of them in the comments):
Use vendor support If:
- You don’t want to interact with local consultants.
- You have very routine support requests that are more often resolved by looking in a knowledgebase and reading the results off the screen.
- You are ok dealing with a help desk employee who may not have ever installed a live MAS 90 or MAS 200 system (vendors don’t like to admit this but a high percentage of their help desk employees may not have ever worked in the field setting up the software).
- You don’t mind handling emergencies on your own with phone guidance.
- You don’t mind tracking and following up with reported issues and installing your own software patches.
- You are comfortable installing MAS 90 or MAS 200 on your own (may be needed in some support situations).
Consider A Local Consultant If:
- You don’t want to pay twice (once for phone and again if on-site service is needed).
- You prefer not to debug issues yourself.
- You want to deal with a consultant who has installed MAS90 in a live environment.
- You actively seek out second opinions and recommendations versus a reactive help desk.
- You want in-depth recommendations versus help desk support.
- You want references for different issues you are dealing with.
- You want to tap into a local consultant’s network of fellow consultants (for example we have 20+ consultants who do nothing but MAS90 and have joined in a formal alliance to support our clients)
These items that I’ve listed above are general in nature. Not every item applies in every situation. Use the list as a starting point in making your own decision.
I am biased in preparing this list as we offer phone support at the same price point as Sage Software. Therefore I recommend that you take all of the items here with a large grain of salt and make your own decisions about where to obtain phone support for Sage MAS 90 and 200.
