Park Community School & RM Education's Self Care Warranty service

The launch of Three Tier Warranty back in May of 2007 saw customers given a choice in what cover they gave their newly purchased RM Education hardware. From the most comprehensive onsite service EduCare, which is feature packed, to our basic "parts only" service SelfCare, customers can now choose from up to five different service levels.

SelfCare, RM Education's newest warranty service, allows customers to repair their own hardware onsite. SelfCare is primarily designed for our more confident Network Managers and Technicians, and offers replacement parts sent directly to the customer's establishment. Such a service has never been offered on an individual school basis, but now any establishment can order SelfCare with new desktop PCs, Notebooks or RM One PCs.

Park Community School is a large Secondary located in Havant, Hampshire. With around 900 students, and 621 workstations around the school, Park Community has a superb and enviable child to computer ratio of 1.45:1, competing with most Secondary schools that have a ratio more like 4:1.

Phil Warren, the long serving Network Manager of Park Community School, recently purchased 80 SelfCare contracts with new RM Mobile One Notebooks. Phil talks here about what SelfCare means to him and why he chose to move from an onsite service to the new parts only offering.

"I have been the Network Manager for this school for 8 years now. For many years I only had an onsite option for warranty, and while I understand RM Education need to offer an onsite service such as EduCare, I personally only need SelfCare. I am confident enough to repair my own hardware, and having SelfCare allows me to repair equipment in my own time.

The main reason I chose SelfCare was how the service operates but it was also cost. I first heard about SelfCare from speaking with my RM Internal Sales Support contact. She told me about the new service, and because she understood my needs and how technical I was, advised that SelfCare may be a better fit. Sometimes, I would allow the contract to run out, and repair hardware with a budget. Instead of paying for one year then renewing, I can now buy 3 years extended cover, and avoid having to take a risk. My "Repairs and Maintenance" budget can now be spent on legacy equipment as the new equipment is covered for longer. SelfCare is cheap, and is a viable option if an onsite service doesn't suit.

I guess warranty is important in any school where ICT is used to aid teaching. Hardware needs to be up and running 24/7 almost, and if something does go wrong, I need peace of mind that it's covered. In this school, where equipment is used by so many departments, warranty is especially important. I would estimate that a child has 50% of their day using some form of ICT. Our Science department have 90 Notebooks, I.T. has 30, and Humanities has 30. Even subjects that wouldn't commonly be thought of as having ICT needs, now in fact do have access to equipment here; P.E. have 10 and Drama also have access. These need to be working all the time and that's where warranty comes in - support when equipment has problems.

I am looking forward to buying more SelfCare contracts with hardware in the future, as we are refreshing certain hardware each year going forward."

Park Community is indeed leading the way with hardware. They have over 40 SMART boards, an advanced music editing studio and a new DDT (disk to disk to tape) backup solution.

Phil has agreed to provide feedback when he actually gets a hardware issue, but so far, the Mobile Ones are performing well and haven't had any issues.

For more information on SelfCare, and the other tiers of warranty now available, please visit www.rm.com/warranty