Who Says Support Has To Be Bundled With Maintenance? Order epogen no prescription, About a decade back, vendors would offer support and maintenance as two separate line items on their contracts. Support would run about 5 to 10% the license fee and so would maintenance. Keep in mind, average support and maintenance fees were under 15% back then. Here's a quick primer on what was covered:
- Maintenance. Traditional areas include basic bug fixes, functional and performance enhancements, upgrades, backward compatibility, and legislative and regulatory updates.
- Support. Most requests fall in the technical support category. Support cases typically include installation issues, integration questions, third product compatibility, and complex scenario resolutions.
Today, almost every vendor in the enterprise apps world (i.e. Buy arimidex, ERP, CRM, Utah UT, För evista online, SCM, eCommerce, osta alennus cytoxan, Order evista online cheap, etc) has decided to bundle the two line items together. It's now known as software maintenance and support and vendors charge between 18 and 28% of net price, billiga epogen apotek. Cheapest iressa, Microsoft Dynamics Uniquely Provides A Separated Maintenance And Support Option With Choice, Value And Flexibility
While many in the software industry have obsessed with locking customers into maintenance and support contracts, bestill casodex online, Køb discount epogen, the Microsoft Dynamics team set out to differentiate the ownership experience around the key principles of choice, value, cheap casodex online, Pennsylvania PA Penn., and predictability (see Figure 1).
- Choice. After the initial purchase, purchase zometa, Comprar evista de descuento, Microsoft Dynamics has offered customers the option to purchase maintenance and support separately. This is unique to the industry for three reasons because customers:
- Choose whether or not to buy maintenance.
- Determine who they go to for support.
- Separate the technical support from the maintenance decision.
- Value. Microsoft's maintenance plan bundles a series of customer friendly services that deliver value. The include
- Unlimited acccess to eLearning. Customers can get to any course at any time with their maintenance dollar. There's no requirement for expensive week long training academies.
- 24 hour self-service support. Microsoft's invested in its self support community and has 1000 new users a month with 30,000 self-help posts to date. Most questions can be addressed in the discussion forum or directly by an expert.
- 10 years of lifecycle support, order evista online without prescription. Most vendors provide a 5 year plan with escalating costs in the 6th and 7th years. 10 years represents a reasonable life cycle for ERP.
- Predictability. Along with the 10 years of lifecycle support, Microsoft Dynamics will use the original purchase price as the basis of calculating future maintenance fees. Users must stay current on enhancements to qualify.
Figure 1: Microsoft Dynamics' Delivers Choice and Value In Its Support And Maintenance Offerings.
The Bottom Line - Users Should Demand A Split In Maintenance And Support
Now's the time to seek options in maintenance. Shelfware reduction, third party maintenance (3PM), and contract re negotiations should provide some relief at the business level. However, decoupled maintenance from support options opens up the customer base to internal and third party options. Sticking with maintenance and not support may prove to be the best value (i.e, order epogen no prescription. Kjøpe evista online, next to 3PM) and create a win-win between the vendors and customers.
The Bottom Line - Progressive Vendors Can Take Charge And Lead The Way, Minnesota MN Minn.. New Jersey NJ N.J.,
Software vendors must reexamine their offerings to understand what customers need. Should economic conditions worsen, more third party maintenance (3PM) options will emerge and force pricing pressures against today's tired models. Vendors must take action by phasing in or offering tiered maintenance offerings and minimal support
Your POV
Are you a Microsoft Dynamics customer? Did you unbundle support from maintenance? Are you looking at options to compare the vendors? We'd love to hear your point of view. Please post or send on to rwang0 at gmail dot com or r at softwaresinsider dot org and we’ll keep your anonymity, Idaho ID. Michigan MI Mich., Let us know if you need help with your enterprise apps strategy by:
- Conducting an ROI on 3rd party maintenance options
- Identifying cost reduction opportunities
- Renegotiating your software contracts
- Improving innovation via SaaS and other deployment options
Take the new and improved survey on 3rd party maintenance and
Related resources and links20091008 Deal Architect - Vinnie Mirchandani "Third Party Maintenance Is Really 4 Decades Old"
20071120 News Analysis: Too Early to Call the Death of Third Party Maintenance
20090709 Tuesday's Tip: Do Not Bundle Your Support and Maintenance Contracts.
20090622 News Analysis: Infor Flex Reflects Proactive Maintenance Policy
20090516 News Analysis: Rimini Street Launches Third Party Maintenance for SAP
20080909 Trends: What Customers Want From Maintenance And Support
20080215 Software Licensing and Pricing: Stop the Anti-Competitive Maintenance Fee Madness
20090428 News Analysis: SAP and SUGEN Make Progress on Enterprise Support
20090324 Tuesday's Tips: Five Simple Steps To Reduce Your Software Maintenance Costs
20081012 Monday's Musings: 5 Steps to Restoring Trust in the Vendor - Customer Relationship
20091012 Research Report: Customer Bill of Rights - Software-as-a Service
20090602 Tuesday’s Tip: Now’s The Time To Consider SaaS Software Escrows
Copyright © 2010 R Wang and Insider Associates, LLC. All rights reserved.
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3 Comments »
Interesting post about the history of support and maintenance being coupled. It seems like a good potential differentiator during the sales process. I wonder to what extent, if any, ERP clients’ requests to do this would find an audience. Would Oracle or SAP go this route just because Microsoft is doing it? Perhaps as SaaS and open source gain more ground, vendors might have to consider things like this.
In my time with JDE and Dynamics, I met customers who had decided to stop paying maintenance and were running on an ‘older’ version of the product. It’s cost-effective until the time came to upgrade the ERP – then the customer had to pay the full licence price as though they were getting the software for the first time; and of course by then the issues and costs of the migration can also be significant. Companies doing this should be aware they they need to do thorough comparative cost analysis.
[...] pressuring software vendors like us to show you the value you’re paying for. According to this article by a known customer advocate, Microsoft Dynamics delivers both choice and value in their support [...]
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