TMA or Third Party Application Maintenance is outsourcing the maintenance of all or part of a company’s applications using an external service provider. The latter must therefore assume responsibility for outsourcing its customers’ applications, in particular their availability and performance.
The service provider must also adjust the applications according to the company’s needs, with which it has signed a TMA.
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The Original TMA
Originally, Third-Party Application Maintenance or TMA consisted of outsourcing the management of companies’ IS to an external service provider under a multi-year contract. As part of this contract, the company responsible for outsourcing had to ensure that the software was working correctly while correcting errors encountered by users and making regular updates.
This system already had the advantage of allowing the client company to benefit from functional and technical expertise that is not always possible to find among internal collaborators within the DSI.
The problem with the old TMA is that it was only done in the context of long-term contracts with high fixed prices and, therefore, unsuited to the volume of requests for intervention, which tended to decrease over time.
The New TMA And Its Advantages
The old TMA, offered at exorbitant prices and unsuited to business demand, has now evolved. Indeed, the services offered are now personalized, whether in terms of services, intervention framework and budget.
TMA is, therefore, a service that has many advantages for the companies that use it:
Better Budget Control
The new TMA approach allows customers to purchase and consume credits according to their needs. The offer can therefore be offered as a prepaid package, and what is not consumed can be carried over from one financial year to another. In other words, the price of TMA varies according to the services rendered, which is advantageous for the company, which pays only for the benefits it has requested, and for the service provider, who can invoice each actual intervention exactly.
Thus, the budget is calculated according to the consumption of purchased credits based on the actual intervention time instead of the annual flat rate, which did not represent the actual consumption. In addition, it is possible to carry over unused credits from one year to the next. The personalized TMA makes it possible to adapt the budget to the services contracted, the area of intervention, and the perimeter.
In addition, to strengthen cost control, the current TMA can use the functionalities of the workflow so that any intervention that exceeds the usual times is the subject of an estimate so that the customer can validate it before she is taken care of.
Personalized Services
One of the other advantages of Third Party Application Maintenance is that it offers a wide choice of on-demand services allowing the customer to choose according to his maintenance needs.
In practice, it is possible to choose between corrective TMA, progressive TMA, operating TMA, training, technical audits, conducting audits, IT monitoring, etc.
A Personalized Area Of Intervention
Third-Party Application Maintenance has the advantage of offering a personalized field of intervention, which gives the customer the possibility of choosing the services according to the company’s actual needs, the systems concerned, and the organizational constraints.
Tailor-Made Expertise
Having all the skills required to manage an IT department is challenging. Using the services of an external service provider allows you to benefit from the expertise of an entire team with solid experience in all areas. New-generation Third-Party Application Maintenance is supported by a group of consultants who are not only limited to a single site of IT but who can evolve and must be trained to be aware of the various technological developments.
Tailor-Made Computer Monitoring
Third-Party Application Maintenance offers support in monitoring the progress of intervention requests by providing state-of-the-art internet tools that are easy to use as well as detailed monthly KPIs.
The Different Contracts Offered As Part Of Third-Party Application Maintenance
There are several types of TMA contracts:
- Flat-rate Third Party Application Maintenance
This is the contract par excellence if the scope of intervention is well defined, with commitments of results, deadlines and costs.
- Third-Party Application Maintenance on a flat-rate basis
It is a type of contract that adapts to customers who have a variable scope and whose commitments of means and results can change during the service.
- Third-Party Application Maintenance in the form of a ticket book
This type of contract is recommended when the scope of intervention is limited and the company’s needs are specific. The services are therefore deducted by work units and will be deducted from the total balance agreed in the contract as the TMA missions are carried out.
The Different Stages Of A Third-Party Application Maintenance Project
The three stages of a Third-Party Application Maintenance project are getting started, maintenance and reversibility.
The first step is for the TMA team to discover the apps, documents and all the information needed to set up the project. The maintenance stage allows this team to move on to correcting identified anomalies and improving the applications. If necessary, the TMA team can provide new features. Finally, the last step, reversibility, consists in transmitting the skills if there is a change of service provider or if the customer has decided to carry out maintenance management internally. Thus, the TMA team is responsible for training users at the client if there is a tool that they must adopt and master.
