Since subscription models have been established in various software areas and cloud solutions have been increasing in significance, many IT managers have the impression that the latest release of a software is always available automatically once the software has been purchased. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Nevertheless, prospective customers regularly ask in sales discussions: “What are my advantages if I conclude an additional software update contract?”
Resellers and manufacturers like STARFACE basically focus support on the current version of their software. This reduces the number of support cases, and previous bugs that have long been fixed in a subsequent release cause no more problems. The result is that if you don’t have the latest software release, the problems can become increasingly frequent for you as a customer.
The dependencies are too great for support to be reliably ensured over several release states. Hardware manufacturers change components, operating system manufacturers discontinue releases states and ignore applications that are only supported by those release states. Telephone manufacturers incorporate necessary security functions that require adjustments on the part of STARFACE PBX.
Ultimately, this means one thing – ongoing maintenance is a basic component of every software. When software is purchased, however, the manufacturer’s service can logically only be provided and invoiced on a cyclical basis after the system has been installed.
During the sales process, you should therefore make it clear to your prospective customers that responsibility for administrability and functionality of the STARFACE telephone system is important for you, as a STARFACE partner, even long after the sale. However, this can only be ensured if the system is always equipped with the latest release. At the end of the day, the functionality of a system is very important for each customer and should be priced accordingly. Questions such as “What other possibilities exist apart from software updates?” should therefore not even be addressed.
Hence our recommendation – when you buy software please make sure you conclude an update contract. This will ensure that the software status of your STARFACE telephone system will always be up-to-date.