CBR: How CTOs reduce support bills on ERP software

Computer Business Review recently published an article featuring Support Revolution’s CEO, Mark Smith. Mark discusses five ways CTOs can reduce support bills.


As competition amongst businesses intensifies, IT managers CTOs can significantly reduce their support bills. Mark Smith, CEO of Oracle and SAP support specialist Support Revolution, talks about how organisations can maximise their IT budget and still receive premium support.

Businesses are under increasing pressure to reduce overheads, save money and maximise profit, often forcing them to make cuts. These budget constraints are often thrust upon IT departments. This puts pressure on CTOs and IT managers to think of new ways to slash their IT spend.

However, making cuts to an organisation’s IT isn’t always so straightforward. After all, hardware costs are difficult to reduce, and specific software is essential for the running of a business. For example, over 420,000 organisations worldwide use one or more Oracle products for the day-to-day running of their businesses.

One often overlooked IT expense is software support. An organisation will assume just because they have a certain product, they will need to pay for vendor support as an insurance if something goes wrong. While vital to an organisation, this can be costly. Organisations that choose to receive their software support from vendors such as Oracle or SAP, will find their support bill is often their largest annual fee, costing a minimum of 20%, if not more, of their original licence costs.

With these costs proving too much for businesses to justify, third-party software support has emerged as a more practical and cost efficient solution for companies looking to slash their IT support bills but maintain a fully supported ERP system.

Premier support for less

ERP support from traditional vendors generally costs between 20-22% of a customer’s licence bill. Typically, after receiving five years of Premier Support, businesses are moved to Extended Support. In the case of Oracle, unless they choose to upgrade to the latest system, Oracle can increase support costs by an extra 10% for the first year, then 20% for years two and three, so support gets even more expensive.

To read the complete article visit Computer Business Review.
Computer Business Review, 24th April 2017

Find out more about Support Revolution.

Skip to content