APPENDIX 2: SUPPORT AND SERVICE LEVELS

Conditions of access to the Support service

The Customer benefits from the Services when he is up to date with payment of invoices for Services provided by Generix, and has a current subscription for SaaS services, and if the latter has agreed to proceed, in accordance with GENERIX recommendations and offers, with version upgrades of the Solution SaaS services, as described in this document, refer to the GENERIX subscription service covered by the Subscription Contract(s).

Furthermore, the service levels described below apply to production environments only. A production environment refers to the environment in which SaaS services are commissioned for use by end-users using the customer’s business data, created, managed and used for actual business purposes.

Customer ticket management 

Support procedure

Creating a customer ticket

The Customer has two (2) different channels for contacting GENERIX Support:

• for all customer requests for the Solochain WMS solution: the GENERIX portal (https://backoffice.generixhub.com/solodesk/)
• for all customer requests related to other solutions: the GENERIX portal (mygenerixsupport.com) or any other tool recommended by GENERIX;
• for GENERIX P1 & P2 Incidents: the telephone and/or the GENERIX portal or any other tool recommended by GENERIX.

Support during business hours:

 The ticket is opened either by the customer or by the N1 NORAM team. In both cases, it lands directly in the N1 NORAM queue.

• The N1 NORAM team analyzes the ticket and determines whether it is part of an incident or a new request (improvement project).
  • Each Customer Ticket is analyzed by the GENERIX Support department and qualifies the customer’s request according to the following four categories: Customer Incident, GENERIX Incident, Customer Request, Additional Request.
  • Depending on the analysis carried out by GENERIX Support, the latter will qualify the request and process the Customer Ticket in accordance with the conditions of this Appendix, section “Additional Services”.
• As part of the incident resolution, the N1 NORAM team consults the knowledge base to try to reproduce the case in order to facilitate its resolution. If it is not found in the knowledge base, the N1 NORAM team will try to resolve the incident based on its own knowledge and experience.
• If the ticket cannot be resolved by the N1 NORAM team, it is passed on to the N2 NORAM team.
• The N2 NORAM team applies similar approaches to the N1 NORAM team, except that in this case their experience and technical background will be important in making the difference.
• If the ticket cannot be resolved by the N2 NORAM team, it is passed on to the N3 technical expert or the N3 Product Delivery team, depending on the analysis carried out by the N2 NORAM team.
• N3 teams are required to resolve the incident, or at least find an acceptable workaround to the situation.
• Once the solution or workaround has been found, the N1 NORAM team will inform the customer and deploy the solution.

Out-of-hours support

• The ticket is opened by the N1 NORAM team.
  • If the customer creates the ticket and it is a Priority 1 or Priority 2, he/she is required to call the emergency line available evenings and weekends.
  • In both cases, it lands directly in the N1 NORAM queue.
• The N1 NORAM team analyzes the ticket and determines whether it is an incident or a new request (enhancement request).
  • If the ticket represents a new request/improvement request, it is directed to processes outside the scope of functional support.
• As part of the incident resolution, the N1 NORAM team consults the knowledge base to try to reproduce the case in order to facilitate its resolution. If the case is not found in the knowledge base, the N1 NORAM team will try to resolve the incident based on its own knowledge and experience.
• If the ticket cannot be resolved by the N1 NORAM team, it is forwarded directly to the N3 Product Delivery team.
• The Product Delivery N3 teams are required to resolve the incident, or at least find an acceptable workaround to the situation.
• Once the solution or workaround has been found, the N1 NORAM team will inform the customer and deploy the solution. 

Priority levels and resolution times for customer tickets

Generix will respond, as part of its Support service, to Customer Tickets in accordance with the applicable priority level indicated in the priority level table below.

Support consists of identifying, analyzing and dealing with detected incidents or requests. It includes activities such as diagnosing, implementing workarounds, making corrections, and updating documentation.

Support takes care of :

• All customer requests declared on the GENERIX portal (subject to confirmed active subscription) and all monitoring system alarms concerning the availability of the services listed below, the infrastructure or data processing. Its aim is to maintain production services at their operational level, in line with contractual performance commitments;
• All customer requests declared on the GENERIX portal concerning the declaration of operating anomalies detected and reproduced by the customer. It consists of application support relating to the use of the service under the conditions defined during configuration.

Support does not provide assistance with use, training or configuration of the Services. Technical and functional Support services are provided in French and English, unless otherwise specified in these special conditions.

These support services are delivered by technical and software experts.

All Customer Tickets are assigned a priority level from 1 to 4 by GENERIX, depending on the nature of the request, the technical and business impact and the urgency of the solution.

As the resolution progresses, GENERIX Support may, if necessary, reassess the technical and business impact of the incident/request and, if necessary, adjust the incident/request priority level.

Priority

This is a combination of impact and urgency, used to identify the acceptable delay in implementing a resolution. The allocation of a priority code (P1, P2, P3, P4) determines how the incident/request is handled by the Support teams.

Support hours

 The CUSTOMER has access to the support service whose opening hours and contact details are as follows:

• Standard hours
  • Regular business hours Monday to Friday: 9:00 a.m. EST to 5:00 p.m. EST
• Extended hours
  • Extended hours Monday to Friday: 5:00 p.m. EST to 8:00 p.m. EST
• On-call hours
  • Monday to Friday: 8:00 pm (EST) to 9:00 am (EST)
  • Weekends and public holidays: available every hour
  • Included in on-call, critical assistance (P1 & P2): available 24/7 with call to emergency hotline
• Contact
  • Office telephone number: +1-514-928-4562
  • On-call telephone number: +1-514-969-7654
  • E-mail: support-northamerica@generixgroup.com

The CUSTOMER has designated a “super-user” who has access to the Generix support service during the hours mentioned above. Super-users are registered on the CUSTOMER portal during the “super-user training” stage of the project. The Generix Group support administrator assigns them a login/password. They are the customer’s single point of contact with the support department.

The super-user will have access to the help desk outside working hours. This service is only available for calls of criticality levels 1 and 2, concerning a software incident.

In the event of a change of superuser, the CUSTOMER must request new access to the CUSTOMER portal.

During business hours, support includes phone call time, problem analysis, troubleshooting and resolution.

For all special agreements made with the CUSTOMER (e.g.: subscription to an unlimited package, subscription to a bank of hours, etc.), the parties will agree to sign an amendment to the present contract in order to determine the conditions of the agreement.

Service level agreements

Availability

Under the SLA, GENERIX will be responsible for maintaining the hosted environment of the Services and its availability to send and receive production data without impacting Software operations (“Network Availability”) with 99.5% network availability on an average monthly basis, subject to authorized downtime only in accordance with those described below.

Authorized stop time

Planned maintenance is excluded from the SLA calculation. Prior communication will be made in order to define the best period for the CUSTOMER.

The notice period is 2 weeks.  In the event of a critical incident, emergency maintenance can be triggered.

Also excluded from the SLA calculation are network interruptions, which will only be considered as an attribution to the customer.

Response time

Standard working hours of the GENERIX support desk are from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm (EST), Monday to Friday.

Support for level 1 and 2 problems is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, as stipulated in section 3 of this document.

Initial support response time, problem resolution time and update frequency are as follows:

Resolution: eliminating the root cause of an incident or implementing a workaround. Also known as “service restoration”.

Target resolution times for each priority level according to subscriber service level are defined in the service level summary table above.

Resolution time: is calculated between the creation of the support ticket in the GENERIX incident management system and the transition to “Resolved” status of the incident ticket during the hours of the support service level subscribed by the customer.  Waiting times for information requested from the customer are deducted from the resolution time.

Support levels

GENERIX Support Levels are as follows:

Level 1 (N1):

• The N1 support analyst is our first level of support dedicated to all open tickets.
• The N1 Support Analyst undertakes to:
  • Handle customer inquiries by telephone or via the portal
  • Prioritize and qualify requests (requests versus incidents)
  • Analyze Level 1 tickets, including reproducing the problem and resolving it if possible
  • Escalate tickets to level 2 support if necessary
  • Escalate tickets to level 3 infrastructure support if necessary
  • Handle server monitoring interactions (alerts)
  • Manage the support backlog (follow-ups, etc.)
  • Follow and respect SLAs
  • Forward requests outside the support perimeter to the professional services team
  • Manage customer communications
  • Coordinate with Cloud IT on server incidents and patch deployments
  • Provide support for all interface-related requests
  • Fix the data
    • Identification of ten data items where necessary
    • Escalate to Product Delivery when necessary

Level 2 (N2):

• The N2 support analyst is our second level of support dealing with higher ticket complexity.
• The N2 Support Analyst is committed to:
  • Handle customer requests transmitted by N1 support (SaaS customers)
  • Reproduce the problem and solve it whenever possible
  • Escalate interactions to level 3 support if necessary
  • Escalate to Product Delivery when necessary (a patch is required)
  • Escalate to professional services when necessary (configuration correction required)
  • Escalation to Cloud IT when necessary (infrastructure/application intervention required)
  • Manage the level 2 support backlog
  • Monitor service level agreements (SLAs)
  • Forward requests outside the scope of support to the professional services team
  • Managing recurring cases
  • Manage customer communications
  • Solving interface processing challenges

Level 3 (N3):

• The N3 Developer is a technical resource specialized in system development.
• The N3 Developer undertakes to:
  • Model and implement new functionalities in Solochain, our warehouse management solution, or on Genesis, our internal development platform.
  • Participate in the investigation and resolution of bugs related to the solution.
  • Support the development team in implementing complex functionalities.
  • Develop and maintain automated tests (unit tests, integrations).
  • Perform meticulous code reviews.
  • Develop and support complex components.
  • Support and guide the project team in development activities to ensure the quality of delivered code while respecting project deadlines.
  • Collaborate with technical writers on solution documentation.

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ADDITIONAL SERVICE

Additional services

If the ticket represents a new request/improvement request/additional request, it is directed to processes outside the scope of support and is considered as an additional service offered to the customer.

Services not covered by this contract will be billed at the rate agreed for support activities. Services not covered include, but are not limited to, the following list:

• Manual operations on the production environment to resolve a problem linked to a customer responsibility (orders, preparation wave, dispatch) / Database performance analysis / Database purging / Assistance or file reconstruction due to the presence of a virus / Consultations concerning equipment / File reconstruction in the event of accidental destruction by the customer / Site visits.

These additional services must be the subject of a modification request registered on the CUSTOMER portal by a super user of the application, and will be billed to the customer.

• For all requests, upgrades, configurations, training, etc., hours will be billed at the hourly rate agreed in the Services contract.
• GENERIX’s Intervention will be invoiced to the Customer if the problem is the result of an event for which the CUSTOMER is responsible.
• In the event of data corruption, resulting from an error for which the End User is responsible, any data manipulation required by Generix personnel will be invoiced to the customer.
• In the case of requests resulting from the CUSTOMER’s responsibility during extended hours or on-call service, or concerning priority tickets P3 or higher, these hours will be invoiced:
  • 1,5 times the agreed hourly rate after 5:00 p.m. ET on weekdays
  • 2 times the agreed hourly rate on weekends
  • 3 times the agreed hourly rate during vacations.

In all the cases mentioned above, the assistance service is invoiced by the hour (time and material).

The hourly rate is subject to annual indexation to the Consumer Price Index (CPI).

SaaS Migration and Versioning Management

• GENERIX undertakes to make a new release of the solution available once a year on the customer’s test environment in order to keep the customer on the latest version available. The customer is responsible for informing GENERIX of the best time of year to make the annual release available.
  •      The customer is responsible for testing and approving the latest release before it goes into production.

  GENERIX strongly recommends that the release management process be carried out annually. If the release management process is not carried out on an annual basis, the Customer will have to go through a standard upgrade procedure, which will directly impact the cost of versioning to the latest release.

  During migration and release management, GENERIX guarantees to provide the customer with:

  •      The latest version of Solochain WMS on a TEST and PROD environment
  •      The latest version of customer-specific developments.

  All service activities (application testing, review of functionalities, etc.) surrounding the provision of the solution are the responsibility of the CUSTOMER.

  In the event that the customer wishes to receive support from GENERIX Services teams during the migration process, the hours will be considered billable.

  Given the speed at which technologies evolve and in order to ensure an optimal level of maintenance and security for its customers, GENERIX requests that its customers use versions of its Solutions that are no more than 4 years old.

  Therefore:

  •      GENERIX strongly recommends that the customer install a new version of the application every four years at the latest.
  •      In the event that the customer refuses to version/migrate its existing solution within its operations before the 4-year deadline, GENERIX reserves the right to:
  •      Apply a 50% to 100% increase in the customer’s current SaaS fees, and specific development costs to enable GENERIX to continue to support the CUSTOMER’S current version in the event that the customer has not migrated the current version of SOLOCHAIN to the latest version available.
  •      Permanently stop maintenance and support of the version currently used by the CUSTOMER.

  Warning:

  The CUSTOMER acknowledges having been informed by GENERIX and having understood and accepted all the consequences associated with the continued use, by the CUSTOMER, of a version that is more than 4 years old, and the fact that GENERIX cannot be held liable under the maintenance and support contract concluded between the Parties, in particular, concerning the occurrence of the following events:

  •      GENERIX’s inability to address certain situations related to the security of customer data,
  •      The inability of GENERIX to address certain situations related to the solution or the database itself,
  •      The possibility of seeing SaaS fees as well as specific development costs increase by 50% 100% in the event that the customer does not migrate to the latest version.

  Thus, the CUSTOMER is aware of and accepts the risk that GENERIX may not be able to address and execute some of its contractual commitments due to the end of the life period for older versions of SOLOCHAIN.

  GENERIX shall in no event be held liable for damages suffered by the CUSTOMER or by third parties directly or indirectly related to operational or technical complications that may arise from the non-migration of the current version to the latest available version of the solution.

Licence / Maintenance Migration and Versioning Management

During migration, GENERIX guarantees to provide the customer with:

• The latest version of Solochain WMS on a TEST and PROD environment
• The latest version of customer-specific developments.

All service activities (application testing, review of functionalities, etc.) surrounding the provision of the solution are the responsibility of the CUSTOMER.

In the event that the customer wishes to receive support from GENERIX Services teams during the migration process, the hours will be considered billable.

Given the speed at which technologies evolve and in order to ensure an optimal level of maintenance and security for its customers, GENERIX requests that its customers use versions of its Solutions that are no more than 4 years old.

Therefore:

GENERIX strongly recommends that the customer install a new version of the application every four years at the latest.

In the event that the customer refuses to version/migrate its existing solution within its operations before the 4-year deadline, GENERIX reserves the right to:

• Apply a 50% to 100% increase in the customer’s current maintenance and specific development costs to enable GENERIX to continue to maintain the CUSTOMER’S current version in the event that the customer has not migrated the current version of SOLOCHAIN to the latest version available.
• Permanently stop maintenance and support of the version currently used by the CUSTOMER.

GENERIX retains the intellectual property rights to its solution, as well as all related prerogatives. Consequently, the contract may not be interpreted as involving the transfer of any GENERIX property rights. The CUSTOMER undertakes never to directly or indirectly infringe GENERIX’s property rights.

Warning:

The CUSTOMER acknowledges having been informed by GENERIX and having understood and accepted all the consequences associated with the continued use, by the CUSTOMER, of a version that is more than 4 years old, and the fact that GENERIX cannot be held liable under the maintenance and support contract concluded between the Parties, in particular, concerning the occurrence of the following events:

• GENERIX’s inability to address certain situations related to the security of customer data,
• The inability of GENERIX to address certain situations related to the solution or the database itself,
• The possibility of seeing maintenance and support costs as well as specific development costs increase by 50% 100% in the event that the customer does not migrate to the latest version.

Thus, the CUSTOMER is aware of and accepts the risk that GENERIX may not be able to address and execute some of its contractual commitments due to the end of the maintenance period for older versions of SOLOCHAIN, databases or infrastructure maintained by the CUSTOMER.

GENERIX shall in no event be held liable for damages suffered by the CUSTOMER or by third parties directly or indirectly related to operational or technical complications that may arise from the non-migration of the current version to the latest available version of the solution.

Additional information

Successful support of the application while respecting the contract and SLAs is based, among other things, on the assumptions described in this section.

• Resource assumptions
  • Customer resources will review deliverables and provide approval or feedback within 2-3 business days of receipt of deliverables and prioritize completion of these activities.
  • The CUSTOMER’s resources can be called upon to support the technical aspects of the project (interfaces, etc.) as well as the operational/logistical aspects of its activity (process review, required documentation, process mapping, etc.).
  • Under no circumstances are Generix resources, specifically identified by the CUSTOMER, guaranteed to support the CUSTOMER’s activities. The customer may make a request for a specific resource without any guarantee that it can be fulfilled.

Features / Customized processes

If an additional function, feature or customized document is required to perform the business process, GENERIX suggests different solutions:

• The use of other functionalities to complete the requirements; this may result in additional service charges or subscription fees;
• By using different parameters already configured in the system to meet your needs; this could give rise to additional services carried out with the consulting team;
• Create new functionalities in the product to enrich the CORE or created just for the CUSTOMER;
  • this could become a co-development with the R&D team; and subject to an additional monthly subscription fee
  • or an additional customized function with a configuration project and an additional subscription at your monthly rate to maintain this new function, feature or document.

Depending on the nature of the activity required, the GENERIX team will propose the best solution to the Customer.

Crisis unit

The Parties agree that in the event of the need to set up a crisis unit following an incident for which the Customer is responsible, the costs invoiced will be on a time and materials basis, per profile, in accordance with the terms and conditions described below.

• In the event of a crisis cell resulting from the CUSTOMER’s responsibility during extended hours or on-call service, or concerning priority tickets P2 or higher, these hours will be billed:
  • 1.5 times the agreed hourly rate after 5:00 p.m. ET on weekdays
  • 2 times the agreed hourly rate on weekends
  • 3 times the agreed hourly rate on public holidays.

Availability and commitment to service 

Definitions

– Availability means the percentage of time during a calendar month that the applicable Cloud Services are accessible in Production and is calculated as follows:

Availability rate = Total number of minutes actually available in the calendar / (Total number of minutes per calendar month – Scheduled downtime minutes)

– A planned shutdown means a service shutdown for maintenance or upgrades, a scheduled shutdown or a deliberate shutdown in agreement with the customer.

– Production use means that the customer can access subscribed SaaS business services to perform major, critical processes essential to the customer’s day-to-day operations in a production environment.

– Unplanned downtime means the period during which all or a subset of the subscribed SaaS Services in the production environment is unavailable, measured in minutes from the time a trouble ticket is opened in Generix’s incident management system, until the time service use has been restored, through resolution or workaround. Unplanned outages are not planned by Generix or the customer.

Performance management

For some SaaS Services, as part of the implementation process, GENERIX will agree performance metrics with the customer which will be documented in writing between GENERIX and the Customer. 

Exclusions

The SLA does not apply to: (1) non-production, test or pre-production environments; or (2) any downtime or performance issues caused by or resulting from:

• your or a third party’s equipment, software or other technology (other than third party equipment under our direct control);
• you or your user use the SaaS Services in violation of the terms of your SaaS Services subscription contract;
• misuse by your users (for example, unapproved hacking or denial-of-service attacks initiated by an authorized user);
• your failure to allow us to install security patches or third-party software patches;
• your inability to allow us to install the current applicable versions, updates and upgrades for the SaaS Services that we have identified and proposed to you to resolve;
• implementation or configuration services for additional users or applications ordered by you or other services requested by you;
• Planned downtime, including downtime resulting from upgrades or updates or for the installation of security patches or emergency repairs;
• factors beyond our reasonable control, including (i) any force majeure, (ii) telecommunications, Internet, outages or delays, (iii) hardware, software, networks, power or telecommunications systems not in our possession, reasonable control or responsibility, and (iv) any action or inaction by you or any third party; or
• suspension or termination of your right to use the SaaS Services in accordance with the terms of your SaaS Services subscription agreement.

Subscription service updates

In accordance with these conditions and on GENERIX’s recommendations and offers, you have knowledge of and access to all updates, versions, upgrades and improvements to SaaS Services which are not designated by Generix as new products or modules for which an additional subscription is required. In this context, Generix will perform Support Services on the latest version of the Solution delivered to the Customer or one of the two (2) versions of the Solution immediately prior.

If you have a current subscription to SaaS Services, we will be responsible for upgrading, updating and enhancing the platform in accordance with the Service offering to which you have subscribed.

In the event of changes to the Services, we are not responsible for upgrades, updates and enhancements unless you have purchased such service changes for a separate fee.

Any code developed by the Customer is required to use Generix published or approved APIs to access Subscription Content. 

Service update management

Technical upgrades are included as a component of the subscribed SaaS services. The upgrade is a technical upgrade only and, while retaining existing functionality, will not include the implementation of new business processes that may be present in the new version of the cloud services.

Updates to included Solutions may consist of bug fixes to correct defects in the then-current version of Cloud Services.

Technical platform updates

 If the date of availability of the Subscription Content is within the last four (4) years, the upgrade will be free of charge. If the date of availability of the Subscription Content is earlier than four (4) years, you will be charged 100% of the upgrade fee for any technical upgrade performed.

Provision of new business processes

Updates to Services may consist of new functionality (as described in the applicable Documentation) and/or enhancements to existing Business Processes in the then current version of SaaS Services.

Production and test environments

The customer will be provided with a production environment during the Subscription Term. In cases where a test or development environment is required on a permanent basis during the Subscription Term, one (1) test environment will be limited. We are not obliged to provide additional environments unless expressly stated as an option in your Cloud Services Subscription Agreement.