In your organisation, are the words ‘Oracle’ and ‘SAP’ met with sighs and weary expressions? Do you approach your support contract renewal with a sense of dread, knowing that it’s all going to be the same for another year – just more expensive? Third-party support may be your way out.
If you’re used to this kind of arrangement, then it sounds like your vendor relationship might be broken.
Having spoken to other IT and Procurement leaders in the industry, we’ve come to notice common themes among organisations who feel the same way. In case you need additional proof of the broken relationship, here are some of the signs that you need to switch to third-party support.
1. You need to save IT budget
Switching from vendor to third-party support can dramatically reduce your maintenance fees, reclaiming a significant portion of your IT budget.
For support fees, vendors usually charge 17-22% of your licence costs, with 4% increases YoY. A contract with Support Revolution aims to cut your existing bill by at least 50%!
Our methods help unlock IT budget, which you can reinvest or save accordingly, and the only process you’ve had to change is who provides your support.
2. You want to avoid an upgrade
You may be happy with your systems as they are now and have no real need to upgrade, or you may be running older, “legacy” systems which, if upgraded, risk destabilising your estate. The upgrade your vendor offers may not hold any particular value for you.
Whatever your reason(s) for avoiding upgrades, third-party support allows you to pause your existing estate as it is now. Current versions and any customisations are kept intact, so you and your organisation can maintain a familiar, functioning set-up. You don’t need to endure the expensive, time-consuming process of upgrading, and focus instead on running your organisation.
3. You want to avoid moving to Oracle or SAP’s SaaS Cloud
Oracle and SAP are undoubtedly trying to move you towards their Cloud products, but a reimplementation isn’t in your IT roadmap just yet. It may not be in your roadmap for some time, but that won’t stop your vendor trying to move you along.
Like avoiding an upgrade, moving to third-party support pauses your existing systems. This means that you can continue with your current setup, sweating your assets, and saving a considerable amount of money while you’re doing it. In the meantime, you can still get the benefits of the Cloud by moving your current on-premise systems to a Cloud-like AWS or Azure.
Then, if your organisation later decides that it does want to move to Oracle or SAP’s Cloud products, you have savings to work with, and you can embark upon the project on your terms and timeline, not on your vendors’.
4. You need to recover following a vendor audit
Oracle and SAP will often initiate an audit against an organisation if they believe them to be non-compliant and then raise a hefty fine. The vendor may also state that upgrading or moving to the Cloud, is the “only way” of reinstating compliance.
In either scenario, an audit is going to cost you. Third-party support can help soften the blow by enabling you to save on your support bills straight away, freeing up some of the budget lost to the audit fine.
And, in cases where the vendor tries to make you upgrade or move to the Cloud, you can also use third-party support to avoid that process. We’ll pause your estate, save costs to help you recover, and give you breathing room to rebuild.
5. You no longer receive the support you need
Oracle and SAP will only provide necessary patching and updates to their most recent products and versions. Organisations that haven’t followed the route of regularly upgrading, but maintain older products, are left with minimal support or have been left unsupported altogether. But they still need these patches so their systems aren’t vulnerable to attack or made non-compliant following legislative changes.
Oracle and SAP will provide these necessary updates… but only if the organisation upgrades.
Third-party support does not require you to upgrade. Support Revolution can provide the patches necessary to keep you protected and compliant, and we can provide these updates faster than the vendor. We also create legislative patches that are tailormade to your systems taking any customisations into account, to avoid any disruptions.
How many of these boxes do you tick?
Organisations are already reading the signs and taking it as their cue to switch to third-party support.
Premier Interlink (WACO UK Ltd) saw that they were ticking most of the boxes we’ve outlined. They wanted to cut costs on products they didn’t want to upgrade so that they could invest in a huge modernisation project.
With Support Revolution, they were able to achieve precisely what they wanted. We saved them 50% on their previous bill, which Premier Interlink put towards migrating over to a new provider. We also supplied them with necessary legislative patches, and essentially handed them back control of their IT roadmap.
Making a third-party support business case
We’ve covered five of the most common and glaring signs that tell you why you should be considering third-party support. If even one of these sounds familiar, then your organisation should be acting.
That’s why we’ve put together some free-to-use resources that you can download to create a business case for third-party support. These will help you work out your potential savings and explain the next steps in the process.
Download your free guide here:
