We have recently upgraded from Epicor 10.1 to Kinetic 2022 and our Software maintenance is due for renewal later this year.
With ever increasing costs of Epicor’s maintenance contract, we are under pressure from finance NOT to renew the maintenance contract going forward.
We have already negotiated with Epicor what is the cheapest we could drop down to, including dropping modules that we do not use or are not business critical but the pricing is still prohibitive.
Does anyone have any experience of using Epicor WITHOUT an active Maintenance and Support agreement?
The thought is that for general applications help we can reach out to consultant subcontractors, but if we do experience a “business critical” issue, are there any options out there for ad-hoc support (paid hourly)? Like for things that we may need a data patch for?
We are currently being told that Epicor do not offer this without a maintenance contract and that other partners will also be the same? Does anyone know if this is the case? And are there any other options out there?
Don’t do it. You will not be able to download updates (aka bug fixes) without maintenance. There is no consultant who can help you without access to updates. And whenever you finally want to get back on maintenance, you will have to pay for all the months/years you were off. Its penny wise and pound foolish.
Your ERP runs the core of your business there are a lot of places to cut costs in but IMO the ERP isn’t where you should start.
The maintenance is steep!!! But much like home or auto insurance you don’t want to fly without it
The maintenance covers upgrades, fixes, support, patches and just general assistance. Unless you are planning on staying in the same version of epicor for the next 10 years this is a bad idea. And even if you are never upgrading again, not having support when your ERP goes sideways is no way to live.
You could maybe re-evaluate your modules, cancel the ones you dont use, cut down on some licenses you dont use, talk to your CAM who can give you a discount at maintenance, and keep it.
Do what Haso and others have said and keep negotiating the contract and rates. Ask your finance team what dollar amount they are willing to spend on this because cancelling maintenance altogether is going to pose a much larger risk/cost than it would be to renew. Then try to negotiate more.
Tell Epicor what your business can afford and ask them to help your company “make, move, and sell,” by lowering the rates on the contract. Epicor wants businesses to succeed, and they also need money to keep the software up. I bet there’s something more Epicor can do and there’s gotta be some figure your company is willing to spend.
Ask the finance team what other companies spend on software maintenance/licensing… I bet it’s not $0.
We have been negotiating with Epicor for months and have dropped all of the modules that we can in order to reduce the costs, but it is still too high.
We are interested in understanding what options are out there for support without being on maintenance, so that we can use this information to reach a final decision.
Thanks.
That’s a little gray area, while I don’t think there’s anything specific stopping them from taking on the client they would have to make sure they aren’t using resources such as EpicWeb etc that only come with maintenance agreement in place. I could see how that would potentially get muddy rather quickly.
I’m just going to be blunt. Unless finance is telling you absolutely no, and if they actually have that power in your company, just tell them thanks for their opinion and renew it.
It’s not worth it if something goes wrong.
It’s a cost of doing business. If they can’t see that, or afford it, then your company has bigger problems.
Not trying to be gruff, but that’s just the way it is.
I’m sure you don’t want to hear from another person that cancelling maintenance is a bad idea… But it’s not a good one.
Unfortunately, I don’t think you have many options out there for support without an agreement. Even if you get a consultant who would help with issues, if it comes down to needing just a patch or data fix, they’re not going to be able to get it for you without a maintenance agreement.
We too went down this path. We reduced the number of user licenses and sold back modules we were no longer using and had discussions about not continuing with maintenance. We decided to continue paying maintenance because, for us, if we were to experience a business critical issue and we were potentially unable to work for a day or two, it would cost us more than our maintenance fee for the year…
Epicor maintenance is definitely steep and it goes up annually, but it’s not one of the places to trim the budget.
I wonder if there’s a different way y’all can look at it. This is a bit like the gambler’s’ fallacy (something which I’ve fallen for and cost me 1K+ in vegas a while back ) when you are playing roulette there are 38 slots 18 red, 18 black , 00 and 0
The odds of landing a color are 18/38 every single time you spin the wheel not matter how many times you spin and or how many times it lands in red, your ods are the exactly the same every time you spin.
Yet if you are at the table and you see that ball land on Red, Red,Red,Red,Red,Red,… you are probably going to “predict” that the next one is Black cause what ARE THE ODDS of that happening again! (still the same…).
My point is that because you’ve been safe thus far and haven’t needed emergency support services it seems that the value (ROI) provided isn’t there so its easy to look at it and say well is this really worth it? But, the odds of something catastrophic happening are still the same as they were yesterday and you wouldn’t want to land on the wrong side of that equation.
Yes consultants can provide limited one time hourly support, but are you willing to risk it?
Another approach you can take is using math. How much is your annual maintenance? What is your company overhead/hr? What is the cost of being down? Doesn’t have to be a computer/server/db down scenario that you may need support for. Could be something like this TRANGLC Deleted after Purge and Summarize!
It is a rather uncomfortable feeling, when it feels like they have your whole company hostage. A bit like health insurance… milk you dry, and when its time for them to provide service make the experience like pulling teeth. But best not derail into another support bashing thread.
I concur with everyone else, pay for support or you might as well change ERP platforms.
Are you sure that you get locked out of EpicWeb without maintenance?
We had a blip of no maintenance a while back while negotiating contracts and whatnot, but we only got locked out of Epiccare, not EpicWeb (i.e. I could still download updates). Not sure if that’s because our negotiations were in progress and they cut us some slack or if anyone without maintenance can get into EpicWeb.
) when you are playing roulette there are 38 slots 18 red, 18 black , 00 and 0