How much should a new cloud financial management system cost

17.08.2015
The majority of net new financial system implementations today are cloud or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) financial management solutions. Organizations either outgrew their existing on-premise solution, realized that another upgrade was risky with little benefit and a lot of cost, or have recognized that modern cloud solutions offer many benefits over their existing inflexible 1990s era system.

As executives look to the cloud, they are being bombarded with mixed messages about how much these applications will cost. This is especially true with vendors who have an existing on-premise or hosted solution. They are offering “cloud” solutions that typically entail putting their on-premise application “in the cloud” and offering it to you as a single tenant solution. Although “cloud-like,” there are many differences between single tenant and multi-tenant cloud.   There is an easy way to tell the difference as outlined in this post.

These vendors are desperately trying to protect their revenue stream, so they offer their existing customers either:

The end result of these pricing strategies is that vendors are using their existing revenue streams to freeze out possible competition. For the CFOs and CIOs that need to look for a solution that will meet their needs over decades, they will want more choices, not less.

A strategy that CFOs and CIOs should deploy is to look at all of the market leaders. It may be that their existing vendor (along with the above pricing “incentives”) is indeed offering the best solution for them. However, they would be doing their company a disservice by not assessing all of their options. Therefore, CFOs and CIOs should select a solution based on the answers to these six questions:

The reality is that the new solution you choose is a long-term commitment, similar to a marriage. You need to be with that company and product (or spouse!) for a long time. You want someone that can grow with you and be by your side during the good and bad times. Don’t make this long-term commitment without playing the field and finding the right match for you.

(www.cio.com)

John Hoebler

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