It generally involves the maintenance party and the other party signing the contract
Here's some information I've found:
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The origin of maintenance contracts
For telecom equipment, usually when you sign a contract for the equipment, it includes a warranty period for a certain period of time, six months to a year. Generally, the warranty period is based on the relevant terms and conditions in the equipment contract, and it is common practice to start with the PAC.
Look first at the complete process of a telecom equipment project. Currently, in the telecom industry, there is a popular concept called turnkey, which is also known as a turnkey project. As carriers, they don't want to get too involved in these trivial things, things that don't bring them direct profits, so they want the equipment suppliers to provide them with an operational network directly. Even if it's not a turnkey project, they want to minimize the involvement of their own staff in the execution of the project. So, typically, a complete network project involves a number of processes:
In the early stages of the project, equipment vendors such as Ericsson, Siemens, Nokia, Motorola, Nortel, Huawei, and ZTE conduct a market orientation. The marketers communicate with the bureau's planning department or strategic planning department, etc., and lobby. And generally speaking, any operator is not willing to let one equipment supplier supply exclusively, so that, the risk is too great. One is that if there is some kind of equipment failure, the whole network may be paralyzed, and the other is that if there is a problem with this company, it will directly lead to difficulties for the operator to extricate itself. Therefore, the bureau will conduct a public tender. Before that, the vendor needs to do a lot of work, including preliminary engineering surveys, detailed network design and planning, because the documents involved in the tender include all aspects of the content. Examples are:
1.
Table of Content & Exum
2.
Cover Letter
3.
Non Disclosure Agreement
4. General Response
5.
Technical Response
6.
Partnership & Commercial Response
7.
Service Level Agreement Response
7. Agreement Response
First of all, the bureau will have its own department to create a tender, which includes some terms and conditions that the operator thinks must be met and wants to be met, then the equipment supplier must buy the tender, and the price of the tender is not cheap, and some of them cost up to $100,000 or more for a single tender. The Vendor (telecom equipment supplier) who buys the tender needs to respond to all the terms and conditions, whether to agree or disagree, and the current competition is extremely fierce, unless some extreme terms and conditions, generally choose to agree with all, otherwise it is likely to lose the opportunity to respond to the bidding stage. the Vendor will generally organize pre-sales technical support staff, commercial staff, legal staff, etc. to carefully read the corresponding bidding Vendors usually organize pre-sales technical support staff, commercial staff, legal staff, etc. to carefully read the corresponding sections of the tender, and if they make too many promises, they may fall into the trap set by the Operator. After all the vendors have answered the bids and submitted them to the operator, the operator will organize all the vendors who have purchased the bids to evaluate the bids, that is to say, each vendor will be asked to make a presentation of the bids that they have answered, and then the bureau will ask a lot of questions, why this and why that. Once this stage is completed, it's time to announce who won the bid. One way is to organize all the vendors to a place (usually a hotel) to be closed, all the participants are not allowed to leave the closed place (e.g., the hotel) during this period, and then the bureau will organize rounds and rounds of individual inquiries to ask for quotations and cut the price until the bureau is satisfied. Finally, the winning bid will be announced. This is the method of negotiation used more often. Another way is electronic bidding, the English for e-aution. this way is the most headache for all vendors, because who do not know what the price of the home, because the way to negotiate, after all, there is a process, each other can always get some information, and electronic bidding all vendors at the same time, at the same time bidding, once a lapse in judgment, will be a total loss. Some operators like this way very much. From here it is not difficult to see, a lot of work before the bidding is often limited by time and human resources, so the bidding market personnel, pre-sales technical support staff, business technicians, etc., often will stay up all night, and sometimes in some major projects, and even the leadership will be personally involved in order to ensure that the bidding work is carried out smoothly.
After declaring the bid, the next step is to sign the contract. Telecom contracts are complex and involve multiple countries and regions, different laws, different cultures, etc. Some of these contracts are due to multinational carriers. I won't bore you with the details here, and I can't make them clear in a sentence or two. A complete contract will include the following parts. I will briefly explain a few of them.
1.
Executive Summary
2.
SOC (statement of compliance)
3.
BoQ (Bill of quantity)
4. System Design and Configuration. This document actually shows the level of a vendor. a high level of vendor will inevitably design a network that has inherent advantages and will save a lot of money from the network design. For example, if a manufacturer designs a tower that is 40 meters high and another manufacturer designs a tower that is 35 meters high, but both can meet the same requirements, the latter manufacturer will undoubtedly save a lot of money. There is no doubt that the latter manufacturer saves a lot of money. In fact, this is a very simple example, but there are very many factors in the actual project.
5.
Key Performance Indicator (KPI) Proposal. KPI indicators, for emerging operators, may be developed in discussion with the vendor, while some experienced operators will develop their own KPIs and let the vendor meet their requirements
.6.
Project Management: Project management is now as popular as MBA, and telecom projects are especially complex, and may even involve different countries and regions. If the project is not executed well, it will not only bring high costs to the vendor, but also directly affect the operator's commercial plan. If the market opportunity is not grasped, the operator may fall into a financial crisis. As a result, more and more operators are putting stringent requirements on project managers. For example, Hwang is going to interview the project manager, and if the project manager provided by the supplier can't pass the interview with Hwang, he or she may lose the order directly.
7.
Installation, Test and Commissioning Procedures
8.
Project Reference. This document requires vendors to provide information about the equipment currently running on the network.
8.
Project Reference.
9.
Supporting Brochures
10. Training Plan for System Operator
11. Attachments
After the contract has been signed, it's time to implement the project. The supplier has to start organizing careful engineering surveys, scheduling, and shipping. Some operators may also require factory inspection. As it is an international contract, there are necessary stages such as customs clearance and sea (or air) transportation. The next stage is the distribution of the goods, inland transportation to the site. Here there is a very important contract terms need to pay attention to, is the place of delivery, in the terms2000 there are a lot of terms, such as DDP, DDU, etc., depends on the specific circumstances, of course, is generally the closer to who, the more favorable to who. And the payment part will involve detailed payment terms and payment methods, which is used a lot is the letter of credit. If a letter of credit is used, it will be designed to at least four banks. It all seems complicated enough.
During the implementation phase of the project, the supplier will first have a project kick-off meeting with the bureau, which actually consists of two meetings, one for DRM and one for kick off, but some smaller projects may be combined into one. In this meeting, both parties will set the relevant responsible person, work interface, responsibility matrix, milestones and so on. When the equipment arrives, depending on the terms of the contract, it may be cleared by the supplier or the operator, followed by domestic transportation from the project site to the appropriate site. While clearing customs, or before, the supplier needs to do an RFI (Ready for Installation), or installation environment check, with the operator. This is usually done twice to ensure the readiness of the appropriate resources such as AC power, UPS, transmission, etc. Next comes the engineering installation and commissioning phase. In order to include unpacking and inspection, hardware installation, equipment power, software installation and debugging, equipment intermodulation, RFS (ready for service), equipment commissioning, equipment initial inspection (PAT), the operator issued a preliminary certificate of validity (PAC), the equipment to enter the contract maintenance period, usually 6 months (depending on the terms of the contract). At present, many suppliers have outsourced the engineering installation, so the engineering installation may be the supplier's subcontractor to do, then there is between the subcontractor and the supplier's acceptance, which is the ATP, and this process generally occurs when the hardware installation is completed. Of course, some vendors may outsource the software commissioning as well, so the corresponding time is postponed. Next, the bureau does the final inspection of the equipment (FAT), the final inspection meets the requirements, the operator will issue the final certificate (FAC). At this point, the equipment into the warranty period (length depends on the contract), the supplier in the warranty period, the installation of the contract SLA and responsibility matrix to provide the appropriate services. Once the warranty period is complete, it automatically enters the maintenance contract phase. Typically, carriers purchase maintenance services from vendors, but the terms of service, including the responsibility matrix, work interfaces, and service levels, are subject to a lengthy negotiation process, especially for emerging carriers.
This is probably how the maintenance service contract came about, with all its inevitability and uncertainty.