Internet Customer Solutions, Inc

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1. Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

   1. Acumatica Cloud ERP TCO is much much lower than the SAP TCO.

      1. The TCO consists of the following major costs:

         1. Software licensing fee over 5 years

         2. The software maintenance fee

         3. The implementation cost consisting of installation, configuration, data migration testing, piloting, training, cut over to production.

         4. The maintenance by the ERP consulting partner to improve performance, install upgrades,

         5. Customization cost

         6. Application development cost

         7. More details about calculating the TCO. Further details.

      2. The SAP software licensing fee might be quite low per user but, all the other costs are sky high since the hourly fee for a SAP consultant are very high. Combine this with the fact that you need a full time SAP consultant year around every year to do the implementation, maintenance, customization and application development. Because SAP is so complex, your own IT people can not do it. With the Acumatica Cloud ERP, this is not the case. Only during a short implementation period of about 3 -6 months, will you need an Acumatica ERP consultant. After some training, your people will be able to maintain the Acumatica Cloud ERP.

      3. The maintenance of SAP is very expensive

         1. A job description for an Enterprise Architect at a business using SAP requires JAVA programming, server load balancing and and Data Recovery. The job description included the following detailed requirements: Strong knowledge of SAP, .NET /Java technology stacks Experience working with hosted/cloud applications and integrations to internal systems Experience in the design of High Availability, DR & Business Continuity solutions of Enterprise applications Solid understanding of large system design patterns and code quality best practices Demonstrable experience designing scalable distributed solutions with API platforms, data engineering, mobile applications Demonstrated superior critical thinking skills and experience in strategic planning and execution of technology architecture roadmaps Proficiency in network technologies: load-balancing, routing, DNS, TCP/HTTP/TLS Exposure and working knowledge of enterprise security models. 

         2. All above requirements are not needed when the Acumatica ERP is deployed in a SAAS environment. Even when Acumatica ERP is deployed on a local server, customizations and integrations only take a few months, not years.

2. SAP is complex and difficult to use but, can do everything that you need it to do

   1. SAP is complex

      1. A lot of SAP users complain that they get lost when they go from one screen/form to another

         1. A SAP user testifies to this:

            1. "Another common complaint about SAP software is its complexity -- well, you know what, running a business is complex, and achieving simplicity is not simply through providing rudimentary software, rather, through high level of automation.  While SAP has been pretty good at "automation", it does recognize the areas of improvement and constantly working in this area."

            2. "But on the other hand, SAP's methodological approach to software development is a key to its success, and also to its bad-name.  While games, or other individual creatively tools can benefit from a "try and see" approach, business software would have a much lower tolerance for strategic break down (I'm not talking about bugs, rather, a systematic disconnect of the pieces of different part of the business).  The SAP solution gave early adopters a "connected, cohesive" business solution that multiple users can work in one system."

            3. For the whole story, click here.

   2. SAP is not user friendly (difficult to use)

      1. SAP is not intuitive

         1. A SAP user testifies to this:

            1. "One of the common complaints about SAP software is its user interface.  First of all, SAP agrees and has been working on totally new interfaces (Fiori is the way to go!), Second, there were reasons for the SAP interfaces -- it was a "legacy" goes back nearly 4 decades the SAPgui was somewhat a simulation of the previous generation of SAP software interface when it was running on Mainframe!  back then, user interface was pretty much command line prompt, there were no "casual way to consume information on computer screen" yet.  And SAPgui design was "batch friendly" -- somewhat similar to the ability of redirect input/output of UNIX systems, SAPgui screens can be "filled" programmatically and enable customer to have 100% consistent process between interactive and batch process.

            2. If you think about how many transactions customers can do in an SAP system, you would understand better the challenges, and achievement of SAPgui which had its root extended back to the 80s.

3. Acumatica ERP is not complex and is user friendly, and has all the features that a midsize company will want. It can easily be customized and integrated with new embedded applications and ISV applications to satisfy the needs of a large company. Proof is here.