Services

The first line of assistance is MaintScape support. MaintScape support entitles you to unlimited access to technical support by phone or email, and all available upgrades. There are no further upgrade fees, and upgrades are typically released 3 times per year.

A start-up support period of 4 months comes with each new license. Afterwards support is available for 15% of the license cost per year. Your annual support subscription fee does not increase with time - it changes only if you upgrade your license.

MaintScape support includes answering questions, investigating potential or actual problems, and specific how-to coaching. We use webinar technology to remotely see our customer's screen, which is an invaluable tool for understanding the customer's question and demonstrating solutions. MaintScape support does not encompass our other services described separately below.

Most new customers choose our initial on-site training course. The standard course is 3 days, however this can vary based on specific needs. Part of the time is spent in formal training using a tutorial. The remainder is spent analyzing your specific data setup and operational needs, starting the MaintScape implementation of these needs, and making sure you are in position to succeed when the training is done.

Training fees are based on a daily rate for the trainer, not the number of students. We can train as many students at a time as is practical, however for best results, we recommend you focus on the primary users who will set up your data and processes. With our support, the trained primary users can bring other users up to speed in exactly the processes they need to know.

Some customers on a tight budget, or customers with smaller MaintScape licenses, choose to receive remote training by webinar. We can view our customers' MaintScape screens from our offices and guide them through the steps needed to meet their objectives. We can arrange any number of training sessions that are charged on an hourly basis. This method of training is very successful, but requires more discipline on the part of the trainee.

Many of our new customers choose MaintScape to replace another CMMS package or a home-grown database. In either case, many further ask us to convert their existing data into MaintScape. This saves them many hours of data entry, and prevents data entry errors that are virtually inevitable.

GrandRavine Software has become very effective and efficient at importing data from virtually any source into MaintScape. We write database scripts to first import your data as-is into temporary staging database tables, then to analyze and verify your data, and finally to copy your data correctly into MaintScape database structures. The analysis and verification steps provides unique opportunities to identify and clean up data problems, including those our customers thought they were stuck with forever. The net result is usually data that is higher quality than what our customer started with.

Because our data conversion efforts center on the data manipulation scripts, we can accept resubmitted data at any time up until the agreed final conversion. This, too, maximizes the quality of the end result.

In addition to initial data conversions, GrandRavine Software can save customers hours of data entry work by importing bulk data into a MaintScape database that is already in use. For example, you may want your MaintScape installation to start managing maintenance at one of your plants that up-until-now used another CMMS program. We can help you import data such as equipment and parts into your existing MaintScape database. Our process is very similar to an initial data conversion, except we add steps to accommodate overlap with data items already existing in your MaintScape database.

Every CMMS package, MaintScape included, requires data setup before benefits can be realized. For example, you need equipment, procedures, and maintenance schedules before you can manage your preventive maintenance. And to set up these items, you further need supporting data such as locations, cost accounts, staff, contractors, vendors, parts, etc. This can be a lot of work!

More knowledge and experience is required to set up any CMMS than to keep one running. Although training helps significantly, customers implementing a new CMMS will not have as much knowledge and experience in the early stages as they will later. This creates the potential risk of a bad start. Although problems introduced in a bad start are fixable, doing so may require data administration.

To reduce the risk of a bad start, a good part of our training course focuses on data setup. However a customer wanting to further reduce this risk will have us more involved throughout the setup phase - especially if their needs are complex. Setup assistance is covered by MaintScape support, however more in-depth partnering may be desirable than can be offered through individual phone or email communications.

Please bear in mind that very expensive enterprise systems are implemented as a major project where setup consulting is as much a factor as software licensing. Industry generally accepts this since licensing fees are very large and the software is sophisticated and powerful. MaintScape licenses are much less expensive, therefore even nominal consulting may seem expensive in comparison. However MaintScape is also sophisticated and powerful, and therefore setup partnering is a good idea for the same reasons.

Any type of customized personal assistance that is neither standard training nor support falls under the umbrella of MaintScape consulting. We can provide this assistance on-site on a daily basis, or remotely by webinar on an hourly basis. For example:

• Initial data setup partnering.
• Post-implementation custom training to expand and/or reinforce MaintScape skills.
• Analyze your existing MaintScape usage versus your requirements, subsequently recommending improved courses of action.
• You can outsource MaintScape related activities to us that you do not have resources to perform internally. Typically these would be one-time setup or administrative activities rather than daily operational activities.

People often wish they made different setup choices when initially configuring their computer systems. Similarly, circumstances may change such that configurations that were once reasonable no longer fit. Data administration exercises can fix both of these situations. Examples that apply to MaintScape include:

• Change or simplify any set of reference codes such as cost accounts.
• Change set of locations and their relationships that represent your facilities or parts rooms.
• Change naming conventions for records such as equipment or parts.
• Any other form of data cleanup.

Some administration activities may be performed by customers directly within MaintScape, and others require our assistance. We do bulk data administration work quickly using database scripts, similar to what we do for data conversion and import projects. Therefore, you may wish to ask for our assistance with activities that you could do yourself simply to save resources and time.

GrandRavine Software does not maintain different versions of MaintScape for different customers or market segments. Doing so would complicate our ability to support MaintScape and reduce the rate at which we could release enhancements. Accordingly, any functionality added to MaintScape at the request of one customer becomes part of the MaintScape product. MaintScape is enhanced continually, and the features added are a mix of customer requests and our best determination.

We at GrandRavine Software maintain a prioritized queue of features to add to MaintScape, and always add our customer requests as they come in. Priorities are determined by assessing how valuable the enhancement would be to our general customer base and to the competitiveness of MaintScape. Sometimes a requested enhancement is of higher priority to a particular customer than it is to our other customers and the market. We may then offer to do the enhancement quicker on a partial consulting basis where the customer pays a nominal amount. The amount is usually less than our cost of developing the feature, and depends on the value of this feature to others.

MaintScape already has interface capabilities to and from other systems. For example:

• Vendors in MaintScape can be synchronized with an enterprise system.
• A large number of data queries can be exported out of MaintScape into text files or Microsoft Excel.
• MaintScape includes a number of programming interfaces that can be used by developers of outside systems.

Of course some customers will have particular and specialized interface requirements. We at GrandRavine Software can meet these requirements at very reasonable cost.