From the Latin principle (omne trium perfectum: everything that comes in threes is perfect) and ingrained cultural beliefs through to literature, mathematics, and even modern film, the number three is commonly linked with good luck. It’s a number that is also associated with power, effectiveness, and wisdom.
It seems rather fitting then that most organisations will typically have three tiers of support available to assist with Oracle and SAP software incidents.
As you well know, when your tech goes wrong – whether it’s a minor or major issue with your software – it could cost your organisation time and money, and is, on the whole, rather inconvenient.
To avoid incurring these unnecessary losses (and frustrations), organisations will call on its robust support system, consisting of three support lines, for their Oracle and SAP software requirements.
But how do we differentiate between these different support lines?
When an issue arises with your Oracle or SAP software, your first port of call will be your in-house support team or helpdesk. Drawing on their generalised IT knowledge, first line support should be able to help with minor issues and everyday support needs, usually along the lines of: “my mouse has stopped working” and “my computer screen is frozen.”
Aptly named, first line support aims to resolve tickets at the first point of contact to reduce downtime and to enable you to be on your merry way as soon as possible. If, however, first line support cannot find a fix after exhausting their list of (relatively) basic solutions, then your ticket will be escalated.
The general rule of thumb is: if it takes longer than 15 minutes to solve, that buck is getting passed.
Escalating your issue from first line support means calling in your support partner for backup (if you’re a large organisation, this could be another support tier in your in-house team). Second line support teams, generally speaking, tend to have a more in-depth knowledge and a broad skillset, enabling them to resolve the issues that are deemed too technical, too time-consuming, or those that are less commonly seen by first line support.
In addition to more complicated incidents, your second support line might handle large software projects (such as Cloud migrations), as well as system and database upgrades.
Unlike those quickfire first line support calls, there will likely be a lot of back and forth with your second line support. You’ll be working together to resolve complex software fixes, or to implement major projects.
Sometimes, try as they might, second line support might also be unable to complete certain tickets and will, therefore, need to escalate your IT issue to the next (and final) support tier.
Cue third line support.
Incidents of a much more complex nature typically require a great deal of time, specialist knowledge, and refined skills to ensure a sound resolution is determined…and pronto.
For these advanced tickets, which usually relate to issues within your software and system, it’s pretty likely you’ll be steered back to your vendor, or if you’ve made the brilliant decision to move away from vendor support, your third-party support partner, to take the matter up with them.
This is where we come in. Yes, contrary to popular belief, Support Revolution (and third-party support as a whole) is third line support.
So, how does third line support, with a company like us, differ to the support from the vendor?
Well, if three really is the magic number then allow us to give you three great reasons why you should consider third-party support as an alternative to vendor support.
Often the tickets that are escalated to us go beyond walking through a standard resolution process, which means we need to have a comprehensive understanding of your systems and hardware.
You can breathe easier knowing the engineers – who will be working to find a resolution for you – have, on average, more than 16 years of experience with the products they are supporting. That’s 16 years of technical and industry knowhow at your service.
We possess a wealth of expertise and are well equipped to help with the most challenging incidents.
Unlike Oracle, we won’t send you away with a self-help guide because, if it were that simple, why did the incident have to be escalated twice?
We don’t think you should be investing valuable time and resources that would be better deployed elsewhere, trying to resolve an incident that requires specialist help such as ours.
Not only are we experts in our field, but we pride ourselves on the exceptional service we provide our customers.
We know that sometimes things go wrong at the most inconvenient of times, and that’s why we offer round-the-clock support. Yep, we’re here for you 24/7!
We also have three (there’s that number again) key touchpoints, so if talking on the phone isn’t your preferred method of communication, you can also contact us via email or through our portal. Whichever way you choose to get in contact, you can be sure that your support ticket will be logged and actioned swiftly.
We’ve even doubled down on our commitment to providing a much better quality of service than mega-vendors by doubling up on our SLAs. So, not only do we have an SLA against our response times, but we also work to resolution times across all levels of urgency and priority.
This all sounds great, doesn’t it? Well, what about if we told you that we have a 99.6% success rate for meeting both our SLAs?
Like we said, we are continually striving to deliver an unrivalled and timely service, so you can be certain we’ll have you back up and running in as little as two hours.
We’ve saved, arguably, the best for last as we complete our (power of) three reasons for considering the move to third-party support with… cost savings.
For expert Oracle and SAP software fixes, a much better level of support, and considerably shorter lead times, you would expect to be paying the Earth, right?
Well, as luck (or fortune, as it were) would have it, that is not the case at all.
No matter how complex or urgent, we can cater to all your third line support needs and save you at least 50% on your annual support and maintenance bill. To be more precise, we saved our customers an average of 64% on their support costs last year.
That is a lot of savings to reinvest into your organisation.
So, there we have it.
Three support lines. Three reasons to consider the move to third-party support. Three ways to contact us (phone, email, and website) if you want to find out more about what we could do for you and your organisation.
We are third line and third-party support, but your first choice as an alternative to vendor support.
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