We have all experienced “sticker shock” before. Just when you thought buying that new car was within your reach, you took a look at the price – and there went your hopes of enjoying new car smell outside of the dealer’s lot.
ERP Software is marching ever forward, and ever “upward” - that is, toward the Cloud. Have you been considering the move? Perhaps you got a quote recently, which might have left you with…
Sticker shock.
“Wait, I thought this was supposed to save me money!?” you might exclaim in disbelief. While there is no silver bullet, no one-size-fits-all solution for all businesses, in general, moving to the cloud can be a good financial decision. It brings to the fore a lot of other “soft costs” that you might not have tracked until now.
Soft costs?
No, it’s not a term that means “little expenses.” In fact, some soft costs can actually be very big. It means all those things you normally don’t take into account, or might not even know about, that contribute to the overall expense of a purchase. Let’s talk about those as it relates to your Dynamics GP systems?
- Workstation Updates
How many workstations use Dynamics GP in your existing setup? Each one of those has a GP client installed… and when upgrades or fixes are installed, it has to be done on each and every one. Which means someone from your IT staff (or that of your Dynamics Partner) is getting paid for all that time. His pay = one of those soft costs you didn’t count. Will the next upgrade still work with Windows 7 that’s installed on all your workstations? If not, those Windows 10 licenses = another soft cost. - Server Maintenance
There’s a lot of automation in computing, but nothing is perfect. Who is making sure the backups are being made regularly? Who cares for errors when they are reported? Who makes sure the system stays optimized for current usage requirements? Who is applying updates to Windows, SQL Server, and the like? Another soft cost. - Downtime
How much downtime can you afford? While you might not be running a 24/7 operation, the fact is, a failure during working hours can translate to a large sum of lost sales and productivity. And a failure after hours might hamper your remote workers in their most productive hours. But not all companies can afford the server and power redundancy needed to ensure 99.9% uptime – that’s another soft cost that you might not have thought of… but is wrapped into your Hosting plan. - Growth
Perhaps your system functions well now. The more you use it, the more data is collected, and the more you benefit from reporting, projections, and many other advantages. All that data has to go somewhere. What if you’re only licensed for a 10GB database? Well, then it’s time to pay for more. Another soft cost. - Third Party Software Integration
When it’s on your servers, you install your third-party add-on, and you manage it. In a cloud scenario, your service provider is the one who performs all of those tasks. (Another soft cost built-in.) And, they’re the go-to people when there’s a problem – you’re not up late worrying over it... Which brings us to our last point: - Experience
If you have a strong, experienced, stable IT staff, maybe you don’t see this as something important. But if your IT staff is busy putting out many fires (or if your IT staff might also have other hats to wear) then having the support of a team dedicated to keeping your system in top shape might be a huge relief.
Hosting GP with a company that knows Dynamics GP, such as our hosting provider of choices, , also gives you the added help of tuning SQL Server to optimize the performance of Dynamics GP and ensure smooth functioning of any third-party software.
Of course, not everything is about cost. Sometimes the peace of mind that comes from delegating it all to a service provider is worth a premium. Or perhaps there are software integration issues that present a real roadblock to a cloud deployment.
You remember the new car? Maybe what you didn’t think about in that price is the money you spend on repairs for your old car, the increased fuel economy a new vehicle has, or reduced insurance costs. Those things can add up quick and eat away at the perceived difference in price.
So take another look at that . Add up all the soft costs you might have missed. You never know, hosting Dynamics GP might not be as “expensive” as you think!
Contact CAL Business Solutions for a quote: 860-485-0910x 4 or sales@calszone.com
By John Miele, CAL Business Solutions, Acumatica, Dynamics GP and Cavallo SalesPad,
