Sole Source Letter - VA.pdf

Agilent Technologies, Inc.

2850 Centerville Road

Wilmington, DE 19808

800 227 9770 telephone

302 993 8954 facsimile www.agilent.com

October 14th, 2021

To: Department of Veterans Affairs/Veterans Health Administration (DVA/VHA) c/o Amy E. Walter Contracting Specialist Amy.Walter1@va.gov Regional Procurement Office East/Network Contracting Office 5 (RPO-E/NCO 5) Office: 410-691-0611 Fax: 443-693-4947

Subject: Agilent Technologies Service Advantages and Proprietary Source Justification

This letter addresses the question of whether Agilent Technologies is the only organization able to service its analytical instrument systems. While Agilent cannot prevent third parties from offering service for its instruments, we have not trained/authorized/certified service providers outside of our field organization to perform complete end-to-end system maintenance/repair on its products. In addition, purchasing a support agreement from Agilent provides the assurance that a certified field service engineer will troubleshoot and repair your instruments with OEM certified parts. To assist with your evaluation, please also consider the following important advantages of contracting with Agilent Technologies:

• Only certified Agilent field service engineers have completed our multi-step training program and are backed by the Agilent Factory Escalation Process. Our engineers are certified to service the entire Agilent system, including instrument hardware and software. This certification is renewed on an ongoing basis, in order to ensure that Agilent field service engineers maintain our renowned standard of excellence.

• Only certified Agilent field service engineers have access to the latest proprietary technical developments, engineering upgrades, repair procedures, instrument schematics, software updates/upgrades and approved planned maintenance procedures.

• Only certified Agilent field service engineers have access to Agilent’s confidential and proprietary tools that enable our engineers to efficiently diagnose and service across the entire product portfolio, as well as optimize instrument performance. Agilent’s array of proprietary diagnostic tools ensure that our certified field service engineers have the maximum level of certainty when troubleshooting complex technical issues.

• Only customers with an Agilent support agreement have unlimited phone/e-mail access to Agilent’s Global Technical Assistance Center and Application Technical Support teams, which are staffed with senior engineers with the expertise to efficiently troubleshoot the entire product portfolio.

• Only instruments covered by Agilent support agreements are backed by the Agilent Service Guarantee. This guarantee states that “should your Agilent instrument require service while covered by an Agilent support agreement, we guarantee repair or will replace your http://www.agilent.com/ mailto:Amy.Walter1@va.gov

Agilent Technologies, Inc.

2850 Centerville Road

Wilmington, DE 19808

800 227 9770 telephone

302 993 8954 facsimile www.agilent.com instrument free of charge”.

• Only Agilent offers customers the option of Remote Advisor or Smart Alerts on most of our instruments. Remote Advisor is a platform capable of accessing and monitoring built-in system intelligence from Agilent instruments, in order to provide remote diagnostics and detailed operational reports. Smart Alerts provides EMF (Early Maintenance Feedback) templates that monitor instrument usage, provides email-based alerts that notify customers when to consider replacing key instrument consumables and when to perform important preventative maintenance.

• Only Agilent support agreements offer a preferred response time goal and preferred parts delivery. If a customer purchases a support agreement from a third-party service provider, asset management company or insurance broker – and that third party subcontracts the actual service work back to Agilent – that customer would not have access to these standard preferred features of an Agilent support agreement.

Please let us know if we can provide any additional information to assist you in your selection process.

Sincerely, Mike Wolnik

Agilent Technologies

Life Sciences & Chemical Analysis Group http://www.agilent.com/