5 Reasons Why Electrical Contractors Should Provide UPS Monitoring and Maintenance Services
Credit to Author: Vincenzo Salmeri| Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2020 16:00:00 +0000
As an electrical contractor for commercial and industrial applications, you likely help customers buy and install uninterruptible power supplies (UPSs) to guard against power interruptions for their critical equipment. But if your relationship with the customer ends once the UPS installation is complete, you are likely leaving significant revenue on the table.
That’s because, as you likely well know, UPSs require periodic maintenance. UPS batteries lose power over time, fans get dusty and may wear out, connections become loose, filters need replacing, and more.
All of this creates an opportunity for electrical contractors to offer UPS monitoring and maintenance as a service to customers. As the company that recommended and installed the UPS in the first place, you are in a unique position to offer such a service – because nobody else knows the customer’s electrical requirements better.
The following are five reasons why you should consider offering UPS monitoring and maintenance as a service to your customers.
1. Remote management capabilities
Once upon a time, the only way to determine whether a UPS was in need of maintenance was to physically examine it. But the latest UPSs support remote monitoring and management capabilities, enabling the devices to report on their health status to a centralized management platform.
That means you can monitor many UPSs on behalf of your customers from a single centralized location (or multiple locations, for redundancy and perhaps around-the-clock service). At the same time, you’ll likely get a bit of extra revenue out of the initial UPS sale by including a network management card.
2. Ensure uptime for customers
By providing UPS monitoring and maintenance, you will also ensure that your customers’ UPSs remain in good working order. That, in turn, ensures the UPS will be able to do its job when called upon, and that your customers’ critical systems remain functioning even in the face of a power outage or disruption.
3. SLAs and regulatory compliance
For some customers, ensuring the viability of their UPSs may be crucial to meeting service level agreements (SLAs) and remaining in compliance with industry or government regulations. Perhaps your customers need to meet SLAs that require they guarantee their own customers a certain level of uptime; UPSs will be crucial in helping them meet those SLAs.
Others may have to meet regulatory requirements around data protection. Here again, UPSs will help ensure systems stay up and running and no data is lost. Still others, such as healthcare facilities in the United States and European Union, have to meet regulations that dictate they have backup power systems and can ensure they’re functioning properly.
4. Increase customer intimacy and retention
Offering a UPS monitoring and maintenance service will also give you a reason to communicate with customers on a regular basis. You’ll be offering valuable advice and services, which will serve to position you as a trusted advisor to your customers.
This increased level of intimacy and “stickiness” is likely to help ensure you retain customers, because you’ll have a more important and ongoing role as compared to simply selling electrical components and services.
5. Recurring revenue
Saving the best for last, a UPS monitoring and maintenance service will also provide your company with a new source of recurring revenue. What’s more, it will be a predictable revenue stream that will help you in business planning. And beyond the monthly service fees you’ll collect, you can also expect to gain additional revenue by being in prime position to offer new UPSs, components, and extended warranties when the time comes.
Access UPS Monitoring Resources
To learn more about how Schneider Electric can help you launch a UPS monitoring and maintenance service, visit our EcoStruxure IT for Partners landing page. And to get a deep dive on how to help customers choose the best UPS for their needs, download our free e-guide, “UPS Basics for Electrical Contractors & Specifiers: How to Choose, Configure and Cost-Justify.”
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