Cutting IT Costs Without Cutting Jobs

September 30, 2014 | Charley Powell | Vice President Sales – West

How many times have you been in a position where you have been asked to cut another 5 or 10% out of your IT budget? This can happen before the budget year starts, or at any time your company goes through a quarterly adjustment to the business plan.  We have all been there, and unfortunately the easy decision is usually reduced headcount. Letting go of a key resource can cause ill will, distrust, and possible defection from the rest of the team, which is never an enviable position.

In a recent on-boarding meeting, a new customer mentioned that one of the results of their decision to move to third-party support was the ability to save several jobs. While cost savings is certainly a benefit to the customer, whether they are under financial duress or want to redirect budget to other areas, we tend to undervalue the retention of proven resources.

Although replacing SAP or Oracle software maintenance can make perfect business sense, there is often an assumption that jobs will be lost as a result. However, in many cases, jobs are actually saved through the significant savings realized from third-party maintenance. Sometimes roles are added or redeployed to focus on more strategic areas of the organization.

IT cost cutting doesn’t always equate to IT job cutting.

The Single Biggest Myth Regarding Adoption of Third-Party Software Maintenance

September 15, 2014 | Lee Mashburn | Vice President, Marketing

Adopting third-party software maintenance should never strain or sever your business relationship with SAP or Oracle. Selecting Spinnaker Support today in no way restricts your ability to subsequently re-engage with your software publisher should you choose to do so. It is pure myth and fabricated risk. Debunking the myth, about 10% of our customers have successfully re-engaged after very fruitful stints with Spinnaker Support.

In full disclosure, questions should be asked and satisfactorily answered so you are assured that third-party support is your best option. We address questions every day regarding kernel source code access, OSS notes, tax and regulatory updates, Solution Manager, keys, experience level, etc. We also advise prospects and clients on how best to negotiate software publisher contracts today in order to more freely adopt third-party services in the future.

It all boils down to simple premises;

  1. Compared to a software publisher, the right third-party partner is correcting, adapting, and optimizing your enterprise software with at least equal effectiveness for a fraction of the cost.
  2. You should always be in control of timeframe, terms, and priority – even if your environment is customized. You should never be forced to upgrade and you shouldn’t have to pay for functionality that is not strategic to your business.
  3. The tail should never wag the dog. It’s your software and it’s your money!

 

Why Brewster Home Fashions Replaced SAP Support

September 2, 2014 | Michelle Wilkinson | Marketing Manager

Brewster Home Fashions recently selected Spinnaker Support to displace SAP ongoing maintenance for a variety of reasons, including lower cost for more personalized service. Like many organizations, Brewster was forced to deal with the loss of a valuable SAP IT resource. Replacing IT staff is quite common – i.e., for retirement, defection, or redeployment – and the knowledge lost can prove quite difficult to re-capture or duplicate.

Having dedicated, loyal, and long-term employees is crucial for any organization, but change is inevitable. How would your organization ensure a smooth transition in this situation? Would you train internal personnel? Would you hire a full-time replacement from the outside? Or would you outsource from a third-party to replace the experienced team member? For the record, Brewster lost a strong generalist responsible to maintain and manage their business-critical SAP R/3 4.7 enterprise application.

After significant due diligence, Brewster Home Fashions selected Spinnaker Support to provide premium SAP support for a fraction of the price they were paying SAP. In addition, application and technology managed service resources from Spinnaker Support are available to help fill the void left by the exiting employee. Subsequently, Brewster has gained access to a powerful team of experts, proficient across SAP applications and functional modules. Spinnaker Support resources are injected as needed by a seasoned Account Service Lead (ASL). With over 19 years of average experience, this team detects and corrects issues quickly to keep the SAP system software operational, compliant, and adaptable on a 7 x 24 x 365 basis. The collective domain expertise of the team provides an increased level of technology advisory to help with issues related to interoperability, security, cloud migration, and tax and regulatory compliance updates. This Spinnaker Support team soon is quickly earning trusted advisor status while keeping SAP applications in top form.

As a 5th generation family-run business, Brewster’s decision ultimately came down to trust, flexibility, and peace of mind and Spinnaker Support resources have met all challenges thus far.