ManagedOps Spells Out IT Costs

Microsoft Great Plains and Siebel ASP ManagedOps.com is taking the mystery out of comparing in-house IT costs to outsourcing costs with a new cost-analysis tool and three levels of Managed Operations services designed to meet the needs of various mid-sized businesses.

“Especially in today’s economy, mid-sized companies are very cost-conscious of IT purchases of any kind,” Tom Brennan, ManagedOps VP marketing, told InternetNews. “The big mental leap here is not so much that we can calculate ROI (return on investment). The critical piece is that most mid-sized companies don’t know how to quantify their IT costs.”

Brennan points to the common practice employees wearing many hats and performing several functions, as well as the complexity of IT implementations as leading factors for the confusion. ManagedOps’ cost-analysis tool takes into account all the steps needed to implement a CRM or back-office application and costs of ongoing management – the total lifecycle costs.

ManagedOps.com has made the IT cost analysis tool available through its channel partners in North America. So far, 168 partners have been trained within 200 partner locations. “Our partners like it because it’s a tool they can use in the field with the customer, another Value-added service,” Brennan said.

Once the company’s present costs are made clear, the next step is to compare it to one of ManagedOps’ three levels of service – Entry-Level, Standard, and Select – for the Microsoft Great Plains and Siebel applications that it delivers from its Bedford, N.H., hosting data center. The three services vary by the number of applications supported, range of services, and price.

The cost difference can be staggering, according to Brennan. “We generally see a minimum of 30-percent difference, but we’ve seen up to 1000-percent returns, depending on the customer’s environment.”