Proactive Tech Support Cases Are Not The Answer
Your infrastructure team is executing a change to the environment and during the review of the upcoming implementation plan they recount that they have opened a proactive support case with the vendor. Here’s a newsflash: “That’s not going to help!” If you are opening a proactive case with your vendor to help your implementation that is a clear indication that you need help. You should stop and coordinate the right professional services in order to review the risks and implement the correct steps.
When you open the proactive support case with a vendor, here are the steps that DO NOT HAPPEN! The vendor does not start a “Deep review” of the steps that you are going to go through. If you are using tech support for the validation of your plan, that is the wrong use of tech support as well. If you want a review of an implementation plan, this should commence with engagement from the professional services organization. This should be planned out months in advance. This gives the professional services organization time to engage the correct engineering resources. The top engineering resource that wrote the software are generally available during working hours and are not “on call” for your immediate issues.
During a proactive support case, the tech support organization does not shuffle their tech support schedule for your implementation. They do not analyze the change and look at the coverage schedule to put the “Best” people on standby for your implementation.
The one thing that does happen upon opening a proactive support case includes the fact that the organization will put you on a “Watch list”. This means they know that you may call with some unforeseen issue and then it will be up to tech support to fix your issue.
Opening a proactive support case often gives everyone the comfortable feeling that if something goes wrong then the vendor will be there to bail you out. Once again, if your implementation model requires a proactive support case, it is clear that you lack planning on this change. You should stop and engage with an organized set of vendor resources that can help you plan your change.