The Web Economy/20

TCO Strategy
This is a lesson part of the module The Web Economy out of the Open Source ERP/Executive Diploma course conducted by a private university.

Topics

 * Open Source is no longer just confined to lower stack technology such as Operating System and Database. It now includes Business Functions and Intellgence.
 * The ROI on using Open Source ERP is higher than Linux or OpenOffice if the licensing costs of proprietary ERP are exhorbitant such as 100 times higher.
 * However ERP is a complex area and requires specialist subject matter exerptise (SME). That by itself is very high TCO and having the free software does not really anything if there are no one around who knows the part about applying it to a real business operations and environment.
 * The consolation is that implementation costs are an inescapable fact and even higher if carried out by proprietary software vendors.
 * As such as strategy has to look at working out the resource management and long term sustenance of an FOSS ERP endeavour.
 * High number of failures are due to inavailability of resources in the market irrespective of whether FOSS or otherwise is used.
 * There has to be a change of priority such as having a more longer learning period or scoping easier targets in order to achieve success.
 * There are ideas such as sharing the implementation with other similar clients so that the consultant or vendor providing it has more to work on and thus make enough to want to taking up the FOSS ERP project in the first place.

Assignment Tasks

 * What skillsets does ERP require?
 * What significant savings if an organisation uses Open Source ERP instead of proprietary ones?
 * How much are the costs of many ERP implementations in the market?
 * What are their success rate and other constraints in their implementations?
 * How can OS ERP resolve their pains and be comparatively better?
 * What other ideas do your group have as a better strategy than what is stated before?

Activities

 * Publish your works in an attractive manner in your user page, stating your own views and findings providing links to your sources. Use the talk page here to score marks.
 * Create or edit sub-pages of course materials within wikiversity.
 * Discuss in the forum (link shall be provided) by offering your ideas and answering or comment on others' postings.

Links to Student Notes
(Provided by Students - subject to edit ranking by tutor)

Notable Links to Resources
(Provided by Students - subject to edit ranking by tutor)

Sub-Pages
(Done in wikiversity as course material by the students under the guidance of the tutor)

Course Navigation
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