Johannesburg, 25 Jan 2022
The remote and hybrid working model has brought with it new challenges in ensuring business continuity and enabling support and repairs in a widely dispersed workforce. This makes warranties and support a crucial consideration when selecting hardware for modern workplaces.
So says George Moss, Dell CSG Business Unit Manager at Tarsus Distribution, who notes that technology problems are a far bigger challenge when employees are based across the country, instead of in a central office. “Remote and hybrid working has become the norm and many people have ‘semigrated’ to smaller towns around the country. For IT, this becomes a challenge. Organisations still need to deploy, manage, maintain and repair devices to ensure that employees can remain productive. But one broken laptop at a remote home office could seriously impact business continuity and productivity.”
For individuals, a failed laptop could mean a day or more of lost work, and potentially also require a drive to the nearest metro area to have the device repaired or replaced.
“This is where the level of support and the warranty become so important,” says Moss. “Dell is unique in that it doesn’t have a carry-in centre – whether you’re at home or in the office, they will either resolve your issue on a call with tech support, or they will go to your site to repair or replace your device.
“This peace of mind is available to all customers – whether they are in Pofadder or the Johannesburg CBD,” he says.
Moss says the risks of damage to devices may have increased in the past two years: “People have new environments to contend with – they may have their children or pets damaging their laptops, or they may have to travel more between home and office, increasing the risk of damage in transit.
The Dell Pro Support Plus warranty covers customers against accidental damage. Once customers log a call, Dell tech experts will troubleshoot on a call and may also go onsite and either repair it, replace it or credit you with the value of the PC you had so you can buy another one.”
However, the level of support and peace of mind Dell customers can enjoy extends well beyond repairs and replacement, he says. “Pro Support Plus even offers automated issue detection, which notifies Dell if a customer’s hardware is failing. For example, if your hard drive is failing, they will proactively notify you to back up your data to an external hard drive, and they will send a new hard drive. You will also be able to keep your old hard drive with the hard drive retention portion of the warranty included in Pro Support Plus so that any sensitive data on it remains within your company.
“On the enterprise side, Dell offers support services for servers, storage, networking and, on the client side, desktops, notebooks and monitors – including the Pro Support suite. From deployment services to ongoing technical support, Dell extends the IT team and gives peace of mind to IT managers. Dell tech support is large, with an international call centre for basic support, plus Pro Support available 24/7 – with a local call centre. Dell reports that its Pro Support and Pro Support Plus for PCs offer up to six times faster time to resolution than the competition.”
“There are also services like remote install helping customers based in SADC countries – it is innovative stuff."
Says Moss: “Resellers may not have capacity to repair devices themselves, but they can still add value and sell peace of mind to customers – and Dell takes care of it. In addition, Tarsus is working on a co-deploy model where we leverage some of our skills on behalf of resellers.”
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