Q: System maintenance and IT recruiting — isn't it all sending people? Why not bundle them into one total price?
A: Because in these two engagements we carry different responsibility. Blend them into one number and the boundary blurs.
Q: Where exactly is the difference?
A: Maintenance is priced per system. The contract names the systems, the availability target, the response time. If the database won't come up at midnight, that's ours — regardless of whose shift it is or who wrote the offending line. Recruiting is priced per person and ends at onboarding. What that person does afterward, how well they code, when they leave — that's yours. We don't take on that part, and we can't.
Q: But clients like bundling — one invoice, less hassle.
A: Understandable. We tried once: maintenance for three systems plus recruiting for two roles on one quotation, listed as a single total. When that hire later resigned, the client quite naturally called and asked 'who covers for them next Monday?' Only at that moment did we realize: he thought he'd bought a service that never gaps; we thought we'd sold a recruitment. It took two days to untangle.
Since then we list them separately, even when the totals are identical.
Q: Any other benefits to splitting the quote?
A: Yes — renewals become legible. For maintenance: how many tickets this year, average time to close — you can lay that out and negotiate next year's rate. For recruiting: how many hires, how many passed probation — a different ledger. Put the two numbers together and nobody can say which part is worth it.
Q: Do clients ever buy both together?
A: Often. A client hires through us, the hire does well, and later they hand the whole system over to us to manage — two things happening in sequence, not one account. Or the reverse: after two years of managed ops the client builds their own team, we help staff it, then we bow out of maintenance. Separate contracts; just align the handover dates.
Q: One sentence to sum it up?
A: Whoever sells headcount doesn't underwrite systems; whoever sells systems doesn't guarantee headcount. They can share a page — they can't share a number. That quotation is still around: two columns, a vertical line drawn between them, by hand, at the time.
