Terms of Service
This section describes the general services and operating
terms that we, the Mighty Oaks team, work under for our clients. We have three generalized service divisions Business
IT Services, Business Consulting, and Custom Application Software Development,
as per the
first three sections below. We do customize our services for clients, and those agreements would be documented, and client specific.
1) Business IT Services – Short Overview
Our Business IT
Services team charges for time and material service work done in
business hours, in 15 minute increments. Our business hours are 8:00am-5:00pm,
Monday - Friday, non Holidays. We charge 1.5 times our regular business hour
rate outside of business hours, and a minimum of 30 minutes except between
9:00pm and 7:00am. Any support phone calls between 9:00pm and 7:00am have a minimum charge
time of two overtime hours. We have a 24x7 support line through
which we also provide on-site support, all provided by our local team. Two people are on support in a rotating primary/backup capacity at all times.
We work with many companies as their primary IT outsourcer, as we not only do standard helpdesk work but also more complicated server and network consulting, implementations, and ongoing maintenance. We augment local companies’ IT teams, and other local IT companies, with our services, as each company sees fit and as needed.
2) Business Consulting – Short Overview
Our Business Consulting team charges for time and materials service work in 15 minutes increments, although some of this work is done under fixed cost project work or monthly retainership arrangements. This consulting work is varied, and is highly dependent on each client’s need and has included: team building, organizational structural review, hiring, role definition, strategic planning, business planning, budgeting, negotiating, building business cases, acting president, RFP creation, seminars, operations' management, business continuity planning, sales management and training, legal management, and business re-engineering.
3) Custom Application Software Development – Short Overview
Our Custom Application Software division performs services work for time and materials, in 15 minutes increments. We build and maintain some of the systems that we host in our co-location facility. Most of our software is hosted on each company‘s on-premise equipment. With the full payment of our services’ time, our software clients own the rights to code, one of our competitive differentiators.
4) Billing
We invoice immediately for procurements (especially at the beginning of the relationship), and invoice for labour (with detailed half-month invoices for non fixed cost work) through the following methods:
- on demand time and materials (includes direct technology work, but also all other work including project updates, emails, phone calls, quotes, travel, training, etc ). We charge for our time focus.
- dedicated signed service agreements
- fixed cost signed agreements
Unless we have a signed agreement with you, we charge for our time, down to 15 minute increments, whenever used (e.g. on demand time and materials work). We use standard rates for our different technology roles, and by service division. That time is tracked, detailed and invoiced to our clients each half-month. Our rates are long-term as we add value to our clients, our long term business partners, by performing work on their behalf on an ongoing basis.
5) Payment Methods & Invoice Terms
We accept payment via Cheques, Online/Telephone Corporate Bill Payments (available at most financial institutions), and Payments via Email (available at most financial institutions). Invoices are due upon receipt.
6) Business IT Services Division - Quoting Process
We work with our clients to provide the full range
of IT service and support. Our world
class local, and Canadian, hardware and software suppliers ensure cost-effective
procurements, enhancing the long term customer service we provide.
If the current infrastructure needs to be updated with commercial-off-the-shelf
(COTS) hardware and software, we generally attempt to buy these at the lowest
possible price from our multiple reseller partners. We are technology agnostic, and attempt in
all cases, to make the right long-term choice for each client.
In most quotes, there are four people from Mighty Oaks involved in either quote creation and review:
- Account Manager/Primary Technician:
Works with client on appropriate components, and ensures clients’ ongoing needs are met.
- Backup Technician:
Reviews quotes as needed with rationale provided by the primary technician.
- Administrative:
Solicits requirements into detailed pricing from distributors/resellers. No cost to client.
-
Business Manager:
Reviews quote, and ensures meets high-level business needs while obtaining best possible pricing, and to also check accuracy of all components. No cost to client.
In most cases, the distributor/reseller also has at
least one person reviewing quotes. In
summary, most of our complex quotes have at least five qualified personnel
reviewing, and looking after, our clients’ needs. We do work under PO arrangements, and attempt to ensure our clients sign
off on quotes prior to ordering. Your
account manager will coordinate with you on the project work to be performed.
For hardware, manufacturer's warranties will be in place and will likely not include any shipping costs and labour unless there are additional Mighty Oaks warranty clauses defined on your quotes, or for your account.
7) Support
Once we sign an organization up as a client, you may get in touch with us for support issues by reaching our support team (and your assigned Primary Account Manager/Service Specialist):
- Send an email (up to one business day response) to our support email address
- Phone our support line (up to one hour response). Two rotating staff members are on 24x7 support for off-hours remote and on-site services work. We attempt to always answer the phone.
Some of our larger clients have their own specific helpdesk 1-800 numbers and their
own IT email accounts. Some other
clients have us monitoring their infrastructure proactively, and yet more clients
store their backup hardware on our premises.
Please inquire if you would like these, or any other options to be in
place, with your account manager.
We generally recommend having one primary client contact at each site, to
minimize communication directives from client staff. This practice keeps the bills down as well as
ensuring that the clients’ staff are trained on their infrastructure adding to
the clients’ workflow consistency and overall effectiveness.
We provide our support contact information to clients during the client sign-up process.
8) More Information
For our existing clients, more information about the company, our services, and our pricing is available from your Mighty Oaks assigned account manager.
For general information, or if you are interested in partnering with Mighty Oaks for long-term customer-focused IT services, please contact our sales team.
