4 Common ERP Support and Upgrade Costs

There are several cost elements that would affect this line item. The number of cost elements could also vary based on the configuration and ERP deployment model selected. The consulting and support costs could be higher for the on-prem model to maintain infrastructure, backup, and hardware upgrades. For the cloud ERP, the major cost drivers include tier upgrade, additional storage required, and the cost to maintain separate test or dev instances.

Infrastructure Support Costs

If you opt for an on-prem ERP, you might want to account for maintaining windows and VM licenses and additional costs, including consulting help to upgrade them. With the cloud ERP option, your ERP vendor will take care of these activities, and your licensing costs will include them. The cloud ERP option includes most costs from an infrastructure perspective as part of your licensing bundle.

User Support Costs

The user support would be similar in both options, where the ERP publisher would cover any product-related issues. At the same time, your ERP consultant provides support only for a few weeks after the ERP project implementation.

If several add-ons and integration tools are associated with your ERP implementation, each company owning the code might support its respective products. However, if there is an issue that you can’t attribute to a specific product or if it is related to your specific requirements, you might not get much help from publishers. The support reps at publishers may not have ERP implementation experience or expertise in your industry, so communication could also be a challenge.

The best way to ensure that you always have one point of contact and want to invest predictable cash flow in your support costs instead of a steep hourly rate for your ERP consultant is to subscribe to a premium support package. They might cover it per-user or as a percentage of your license fee to provide one point of contact for all your support needs.

If you didn’t have access to such support from your ERP consultant, you might invest a ton of money in briefing and training each new consultant you hire to support you with your issues. The premium support from the ERP consultant would provide a straightforward computation of your support expenses. For example, they might charge $50-$100 per user per month, depending upon the number of ERP users accessing the system.

Version Uplift Costs

With a cloud ERP system, you get the most recent functionality frequently. While you have access to the most updated product all the time, it might be an issue during version uplifts. The newly released functionality may cause merge issues with your customizations. To resolve these merge issues, you would need consulting help. The premium support may include the version uplifts as part of their package.

Tier Upgrade Costs

Some cloud ERP software may also have limitations with their tiers. For example, they might have storage or bandwidth limitations. Once you run out of the provider’s storage or if you need more bandwidth to accommodate your growing user base, your cloud ERP publisher might charge you extra to upgrade.