Many of us get so much email that we don’t have time to read newsletters even from trusted sources. So why write a newsletter if it’s deleted by many if not most readers as soon as it is received? Over the past year, we have opted not to potentially waste our time. But we have now decided to resurrect our newsletter partly because we don’t want you to forget about us but also because it’s good for Search Engine Optimization. Another reason is that the primary writer of our newsletter is healthy again… […]
How Do You Compare A SaaS Annual Fee To A One-Time License Fee?-180Systems
We have found that on average the one-time (on-premise) license fee is 3 times the annual fee based on our experience in evaluating RFP responses from vendors. One might think that the ratio between license and annual fee should be greater but that does not take into account the additional hosted services provided by the SaaS vendors including maintenance fees which are billed annually by on-premise vendors at approximately 20% of the license fee. It’s still early days for SaaS and as competition heats up the license ratio: annual fee will increase as SaaS fees are reduced. We recommend that […]
180 System ERP Customer Survey
From CPA Magazine and written by Michael Burns – “We have all heard horror stories about failed ERP implementations but we rarely hear about the ones that went well. Does ERP deserve the bad rap it gets?…” Read More […]
Cloud security: fact or fiction?
June 1, 2016 from CPA Magazine – “As our cloud survey article showed, data is moving to the clouds at high speeds across all kinds of organizations. But is the data safer than it was when these organizations kept it locked away on their own premises…” Read More […]
Reduce Risk of ERP Implementation Failure: Pre-Contract Business Needs Analysis
You naturally want to minimize risks and avoid cost overruns before signing a long-term contract for a new ERP system. Your prospective vendor also wants to minimize risk, but is usually not in a position to do anything other than give an implementation estimate based on lots of assumptions about scope, roles and responsibilities. These assumptions could be fairly accurate, but could also be way off, which could lead to surprises and costly change orders during the implementation. Neither you nor the vendor want this to happen. Wrong assumptions that lead to change orders will create frustration, friction and could […]
Prophix Interview
I recently spoke with Andy Amalfitano CPA, CA, Director of Sales Central Region for Prophix about changes at Prophix and his perception of the cloud. Prophix (http://www.prophix.com/) is one of the leading solutions for Corporate Performance Management (CPM). Prophix includes: Budgeting, analysis and forecasting Financial, statutory and management reporting Financial consolidation Profitability modeling & optimization, cash flow and revenue planning Operational and strategic planning Prophix targets organizations with revenues between $50M and $2B who want to evolve from being dependent on Excel for their key financial processes. Prophix recently announced the latest version of its CPM solution, one that will […]
Statement of Work (SOW) Stoppers
The SOW is a key document from your vendor that can make or break the implementation. The vendors will do their best to reduce their risk by limiting scope to a high level list, assuming that you will follow best practices, and making a lot of other assumptions about you doing work that you don’t know or understand the effort to complete. As the vendor risks go down, the customer risks go up. We recommend the following: Scope is tied to the requirements in the RFP which need to be specific Best practices should only be applied to processes that […]
What the cloud really is
December 1, 2015 from CPA Magazine – “…Below you’ll find a short primer on the cloud and how to decide if the technology is right for your business needs. We’ve also designed a short survey to see how many of you are using the cloud in business – and if so, how” Read more 180 View – I (Michael Burns) wrote this article with a lot of help from Margaret Craig-Bourdin who is the editor of the online edition of CPA Magazine. The first version of the article was considered by Margaret to be way too technical for the […]
So the project has gone belly-up, what now?
December 3, 2015 from LinkedIn – “Most SMEs and many larger companies are not experienced in running projects. It is just not something they need to do on a regular basis and certainly not with this much at stake. An investment in the services of a skilled internal Project Manager is rarely a waste of money. It will often cost you more to skimp in this area and then have to recover afterwards…” Read more 180 View – The author, a business development manager for Pronto Software, makes a number of really good comments on why implementation projects fail and […]
Frostie Dancing To Shake Your Tail Feather!
180 View – I wish I could dance this well. Click here to check it out […]