RE: ALF Expense Analysis

I have been out of the office and am just now reading some of these
posts. I didn't embark on this ALF analysis because I saw no value in
the ALF fees, or that everyone at this company was totally unsatisfied
with the product or the support. Hopefully this post doesn't degrade
into that. Overall, the functionality and support is "generally"
adequate.

My argument is that the ALF increases each year at an unbearable rate
while the development in the modules that we use to run our business has
dramatically decreased. We upgrade our systems at a pace that is
congruent with our needs; not necessarily at the pace of any particular
vendor's development schedule.

We have chosen to drop software support on some stable packages that we
could no longer justify the support expense. With Mapics this is not an
option. If you drop the ALF you no longer have a valid software license.


If the value is there I would much rather continue with support
contracts for all of our systems. However; when support contracts
increase at double digit rates year after year you really need to
reevaluate the value of that contract instead of blindly paying it each
year.

Dale Walker




-----Original Message-----
From: DaleGindlesperger@xxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:DaleGindlesperger@xxxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Friday, November 07, 2003 2:43 PM
To: MAPICS ERP System Discussion
Subject: RE: ALF Expense Analysis


Hi Dale,

Yeah, I think the ALF is pretty steep myself - it's easily the largest
single item in my budget.  But I think I still get decent value for it,
especially as I plan on upgrading to R7 as soon as they finish CSM.
We've
used Browser since 1999, and we are increasing our usage, and at least
it's
a lot more stable than it used to be.  Of course, that could be because
of
the newer versions of Winwoes being a little better than the old
versions.

I was initally concerned about the mismash of languages, as Konrad
mentioned (I think he missed a couple, like PowerBuilder for those of us
running MDCC, and probably some others), but they seem to work fine.  I
am,
however, very much looking forward to running in a full Java environment
on
R7.x when we convert.

One thing to keep in mind is that our ALFs don't just fund existing
application enhancements.  They also fund e:Info and the folks at the
response line, which is worth a lot to some of us.  It's great to get a
speedy response via e-mail, and generally fast response via phone when I
or
my people need to talk to a human bean on something weird that is
happening.  There is also continuing enhancement to some older modules,
like the Offline Shipping Enhancement, and such.  Also, it costs a lot
to
fund R&D for the new hardware, modules, and languages (WebSphere and
such).

On a tangent - Konrad, I noticed no one said they have loaded 5118 yet.
I
have it sitting in my drawer, waiting to see if it's OK.  Hasn't ANYONE
put
it on?

Dale Gindlesperger
IT Manager/Special Projects Leader
Fleetwood Folding Trailers, Inc.
Somerset, PA


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