This continues a series of guest columns from practitioners and bloggers I respect. The category - The Real Deal describes them well.
My readers know I have been writing for a while about the opportunity to lower enterprise application costs through use of third party maintenance vendors - or at least leveraging such vendors to beat down the software publisher's pricing.
So, it is natural I give air time to Andrew Nelson, President and CEO of TomorrowNow, currently the largest third party maintenance provider to PeopleSoft, J.D.Edwards and Siebel customers. Formerly an Andersen Consulting PeopleSoft consultant, he founded TomorrowNow, and it is currently a unit of SAP. As I wrote here, I hope SAP someday allows him to offer his services to its own customers...because he sure makes a compelling case below.
"As
companies and government agencies crunch their IT numbers and become
increasingly dollar-conscious, they naturally look for the best return possible
for their software investment. Solid, dependable and economical support that
keeps their software systems running smoothly is a key part of that financial
equation, but sticking with the same old schemes doesn’t always support their
future business needs or budget constraints. Many organizations have discovered
that a third-party maintenance provider can provide software life extension,
more choices, better control of their enterprise software destiny, and improved
customer service — all at half the cost.
Choosing
a third-party provider, such as TomorrowNow Inc., also raises the
customer-service bar. When considering maintenance services, an organization
should ask, “Why would we stay with the software vendor when TomorrowNow is
offering us better, more personalized service at half the cost?” Many companies
and government agencies have realized the benefits of saving money while
receiving better service and getting extended use of their existing enterprise
systems. TomorrowNow supports hundreds of clients who use Siebel, J.D. Edwards and PeopleSoft
software. We provide every customer a named, primary support engineer,
proactive delivery of tax and regulatory updates, and 30-minute response by highly
knowledgeable engineers — worldwide, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year— a
proposition that goes unmatched by enterprise software vendors or other
third-party operations.
It’s
a slam-dunk decision for many: after cutting the costly ties to their software
supplier, organizations can take half the money previously allotted for support
fees and upgrade their hardware structures, database platforms or other aspects
of their enterprise environment, or simply apply those savings back to the
bottom line. In any case, the IT or applications management group ends up
looking good.
Andrew can be reached at [email protected]