IPROF 98 Roundtable

IPROF Management Roundtable

Training HP support contract
administrators to recognize
PowerPatch 4 and Express 3

Q: Rick Gilligan from Case. My question is with regards to the HP support contact administrators, who from my experience lately do not seem to understand what is required with regards to ordering a PowerPatch and Express tapes. When I ordered a PowerPatch 4 tape and obviously we had a discussion among everyone over 3000-L about Express 3 being necessary if you hadn’t already installed Express 3. So I get my PowerPatch 4 tape and find out about that , so I called up to order an Express 3 subsys tape. An Express 3 PowerPatch tape shows up with no subsys tape. All I wanted was a subsys tape. I call back. She does not even know what a subsys tape is, and this is the person that the Response Center had me call or had call me back to order the tapes from.

She had to get her manager on the phone, and eventually I managed to convince them that what I needed was the Express 3 subsys tape to install PowerPatch 4. Otherwise, I was going to lose the functionality. They did assume, I believe, that every Express release that came out I would have ordered and installed – so there is no reason for them to ship that to me. Then when I wanted it they didn’t even know what it was because in their mind Express 3 is one muddled thing and they didn’t know how to relate subsys tapes to that. I’ve had some other products that I’ve had the same problems with.

I would certainly appreciate it if you could get some more training to the contract administrators, so that it is a little more clear to them what the tapes that you can order are and why, so that it’s not quite as big problem as it has been.

Doug Blackwood: I can’t speak to what specifically happened to you. We’ll take a look at it and see if we need to train contract administration team and see if that solves the problem.

Rick Gilligan: I believe that that’s part of it, and the other part was obviously the way you did Express versus PowerPatch. If you had subsys products you needed the subsys tape from Express 3 in order to make sure you had the proper functionality before you installed Power Patch 4. That was not really made clear in the ordering instructions and then it was compounded tremendously by the lack of the contract administrator’s training. Once you knew what you did need, they didn’t even understand what your request was.

So it all comes together into something that makes it very difficult to just install Power Patch 4. That’s the one that for all my clients is the Year 2000 issue, the one that they want. They were all delaying ordering any of the other ones because why upgrade two months later.

Back to Roundtable questions

Copyright 1998, The 3000 NewsWire. All rights reserved.



	IPROF Management Roundtable

	Training HP support contract administrators to recognize PowerPatch 4 and Express 3
	Q: Rick Gilligan from Case. My question is with regards to the HP support contact administrators, who from my experience lately do not seem to understand what is required with regards to ordering a PowerPatch and Express tapes. When I ordered a PowerPatch 4 tape and obviously we had a discussion among everyone over 3000-L about Express 3 being necessary if you hadn’t already installed Express 3. So I get my PowerPatch 4 tape and find out about that , so I called up to order an Express 3 subsys tape. An Express 3 PowerPatch tape shows up with no subsys tape. All I wanted was a subsys tape. I call back. She does not even know what a subsys tape is, and this is the person that the Response Center had me call or had call me back to order the tapes from. She had to get her manager on the phone, and eventually I managed to convince them that what I needed was the Express 3 subsys tape to install PowerPatch 4. Otherwise, I was going to lose the functionality. They did assume, I believe, that every Express release that came out I would have ordered and installed – so there is no reason for them to ship that to me. Then when I wanted it they didn’t even know what it was because in their mind Express 3 is one muddled thing and they didn’t know how to relate subsys tapes to that. I’ve had some other products that I’ve had the same problems with. I would certainly appreciate it if you could get some more training to the contract administrators, so that it is a little more clear to them what the tapes that you can order are and why, so that it’s not quite as big problem as it has been. Doug Blackwood: I can’t speak to what specifically happened to you. We’ll take a look at it and see if we need to train contract administration team and see if that solves the problem. Rick Gilligan: I believe that that’s part of it, and the other part was obviously the way you did Express versus PowerPatch. If you had subsys products you needed the subsys tape from Express 3 in order to make sure you had the proper functionality before you installed Power Patch 4. That was not really made clear in the ordering instructions and then it was compounded tremendously by the lack of the contract administrator’s training. Once you knew what you did need, they didn’t even understand what your request was. So it all comes together into something that makes it very difficult to just install Power Patch 4. That’s the one that for all my clients is the Year 2000 issue, the one that they want. They were all delaying ordering any of the other ones because why upgrade two months later.
		Back to Roundtable questions
Copyright 1998, The 3000 NewsWire. All rights reserved.