RE: ALF Expense Analysis

Clarification - 
If you choose to participate please send responses to my personal email
address and not to the mapics list.
Thanks,
Dale Walker

-----Original Message-----
From: Walker, Dale 
Sent: Friday, November 07, 2003 10:57 AM
To: mapics-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: ALF Expense Analysis

I am in the midst of analyzing our ALF costs/benefits and am involved in
ongoing talks with my MAPICS affiliate regarding the continual annual
ALF increases that we have been experiencing with the goal of working
towards a mutually beneficial solution. I only wish that our business
could impose considerable price increases like this each and every year.
>From a personal perspective we have found ourselves in a position where
the ALF expense is consuming a significant enough portion of the budget
that it is now directly hindering our ability to implement and leverage
some of the newer modules and I have to believe that we are not alone in
this situation. If left unchecked, we will surely find ourselves
essentially "left-behind" because of the heavy baggage that we carry
each year with the mounting ALF charges. 

 

As many of you have most likely done in the past I am talking with
various MAPICS accounts in order to make a comparison between ILF & ALF
charges and to determine what the "norm" is.  My initial goal was to use
this data for internal decision making purposes only but if you wish to
receive a summary of my findings you can send me your statistics as
noted below. I will share my findings with those who chose to
participate but I will not disclose any company names.

 

*      Modules installed & current ALF charges for each

*      Concurrent user license? If so, how many?

*      Tier based license? If so, what tier? How many average concurrent
users?

*      ALF price changes +- occurring in past years

*      Include any comments regarding your satisfaction of the value of
ALF expenses.  
Improving satisfaction? 
Decreasing satisfaction? 
Neutral?

*      Company name & contact email address 

 

Being in IT for 20+ years I can appreciate the difficulty of how
software solutions are priced; both in terms of initial acquisition cost
and ongoing support costs. If ever there was a topic ripe for
controversy this is it. There is a little black area, a little white
area, and a LARGE gray area when it comes to software pricing. The
intent of this exercise is not to initiate some sort of widespread
witch-hunt but is aimed at helping those who participate to determine
how each of our individual ALF charges compare with other MAPICS
accounts by using a direct comparison of actual charges incurred.  Based
on this information we should all be able to make better informed
decisions in the future.

 

 

 

Dale Walker

VP, Management Information Systems

Gross-Given Mfg. Co. / Automatic Products Intnl' 

St. Paul, MN

 

direct       651-290-4349

fax           651-224-5559

cell          651-270-4150

 

dwalker@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

www.automaticproducts.com <http://www.automaticproducts.com/> 

 

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