Five Tips to Create a Recession-Proof ERP Vendor Strategy
Forrester Research offers five timely pieces of advice on recession-time software vendor management, including: how to negotiate contracts, avoid lock-in, tap into best of breed apps and reduce ERP maintenance costs.
5. Check Out Third-Party Maintenance. IT and business managers can protect themselves by turning to third-party support, which can help safeguard against lock-in from vendors that actively deny customer choice, Wang notes. Today there are companies offering third-party support for many major vendor offerings—Rimini Street offers third-party JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, and Siebel support and plans to provide SAP third-party support in 2009. (For more on Rimini Street and maintenance alternatives, see "Rimini Street Will Now Offer Maintenance Support for SAP's R/3 Products" and "As SAP Support Costs Spike, Users' Group Leader Preaches Collaboration -- Not Rebellion.")
"The market's best hope will lie with the emergence of new offshore third-party maintenance providers in China—a territory not yet beholden to the dominant vendors," Wang writes. "For these providers to break through—much like the business process outsourcing providers in India before them—and answer the growing demand for affordable maintenance, industry trade groups and other professional associations need to encourage them through investments in joint ventures or the development of third-party maintenance consortiums."
