Blog Credit: Andy Chase

Revised annually, this list started in theory as a Top 10 and grew quickly once we collected inputs from our practice leaders & JDE customers. Whether negotiating your next MSP renewal or exploring on-demand support or managed services for the first time, I do hope this analysis helps you to realize a successful & innovative JDE support partnership.

Why JDE customers might want to consider changing MSPs…

1. Lack of Flexibility– Your MSP holds you to the letter of the contract even if/when the needs of your business or industry change, being willing to add scope, but rarely if ever willing to reduce scope. (avoiding ‘Churn’ at your cost)
2. Innovation Still Not Coming to Fruition– Most organizations today are under pressure to innovate and transform their business, and many who hire MSPs do so for that very purpose, yet sadly, some of those who have outsourced to an MSP are still not innovating – how can this be? #ContinuousInnovation
3. Subpar Resources– You know more about JDE than those assigned to help. Seriously!?
4. Use it or lose it!– Your MSP profits from your slow periods/seasons, charging fixed fees even when you do not use the service, then during peak periods you pay overage fees.
5. Reactive Support vs Proactive Monitoring– Your MSP isn’t utilizing 24×7 monitoring tools to enable more proactive support versus the snowball effect of reactive support and constantly tending to unnecessary fire drills.
6. Nickle & Diming on Extra Fees– Your MSP charges rate multipliers for off-hours help and support and/or they raise your support costs every year.
7. Strict Scope Parameters– Only certain E1/CNC activities are covered in the contract, with related activities billed separately T&M (package builds, database refreshes, ESUs, etc).
8. Turnover of Key Talent Resources– Your MSP keeps losing your go-to support people.
9. Lack of Desired Skills– Your MSP isn’t able or willing to help with industry-specific Functional support, or perhaps with related 3rd Party & Development needs.
10. Not Providing Strategic Solutions– Your MSP isn’t available to help conduct critical discovery sessions to identify ideal JDE enhancements or 3rd party solutions that solve organizational challenges & help you achieve growth objectives.
11. No Skills Enablement– Your MSP isn’t teaching you how to be self-sufficient in the areas you are capable of supporting or handling yourself.
12. No Documentation/KT– Your MSP isn’t delivering adequate documentation/KT for your staff showing clarity of business support operations & IT workflows.
13. Inconsistent SLA Response Times– Your MSP isn’t able to respond consistently in a reasonable time period across all High, Medium & Low priority tickets.
14. Missing 24×7 or Global Support Coverage– You’re in good hands as long as issues occur during business hours and say before 2 pm on business days; or, perhaps as a multi-national company, you struggle to get adequate TLC and localization expertise from your MSP?
15. Automation Avoidance– Your MSP isn’t giving you automation tools like Smart Build or Cerberus to increase efficiencies and reduce your costs associated with time and labor spent building and deploying packages or resetting passwords.
16. Not Playing Well with Others– Your MSP isn’t willing to operate in a shared responsibility or On-Demand Support model allowing you to pick and choose the areas you would like to execute by using your own team or other resources of choice.
17. High Entry Point / High Costs– Your MSP wants heavy upfront commitments or long-term renewals binding you to a higher number of FTEs or hours making it difficult to reap remote production support and managed services benefits while controlling costs.
18. Watered Down ‘Core’ Expertise– Your MSP says they are a JDE shop, but their support operations are divided giving attention to SAP, NetSuite, and other ERPs, limiting their actual focus on JDE while also assigning ERP-neutral infrastructure, database & network resources to solve your problems.
19. Acquisition Heavy– Your MSP was recently acquired … unfortunately for some, once they’ve found a great boutique or purpose-built service offering, that MSP is acquired and then consolidated with other MSPs which can result in months or years of interrupted SLAs, turnover of key resources, account management disruptions, new unfavorable contact terms, higher costs, etc.
20. Old School Ain’t Cool (at least in IT)– Your MSP is still using typewriters & VHS tapes to tackle your IT problems, for instance writing extensive code for integrations rather than keeping up on the latest technology innovations (LC/NC Platforms, JavaScript, NoSQL, REST APIs, JET, Mobility, Orchestrator, RPA, Cloud Apps/Services, etc)
21. E1 Optimization Avoidance– Your MSP seems content riding the wave of your antiquated ERP system rather than partnering with your organization to facilitate demos & knowledge sessions, providing Gap Analysis and E1 Optimization services, that help engage and equip your stakeholders to understand, evaluate, prioritize, and then modernize E1 so as to transform your ERP capabilities through Continuous Adoption, Automation & Mobility.
22. Dip Your Toes in the Water with Smart Help On Demand– Circular Edge is now making it easy for new customers to dip their toes in the water and gain easy access to on-call help across all things JDE & beyond without any upfront hours commitment. Whether you are looking for timely guidance, troubleshooting, skills enablement, solution design, project or resource supplementation, now’s a great time to dip your toes in the water:

• Scale-up and down skills and resources whenever needed for as long as needed
• Leverage the knowledge, experience, efficiencies, and brainpower of the entire direct staff pool of resources while working through a dedicated resource lead
• Blend specialized skills with internal resources, to monitor and manage systems, to proactively respond, to improve efficiencies among processes and people, and optimize your JD Edwards and 3rd party systems across the entire organization

#JDEdwards Customers –If you can relate to even just a handful of these scenarios Contact Circular Edge today to learn about Smart Help On-Demand Support and Managed Services, our 3x Award-Winning Customer Success Formula designed to put the needs of the customer first. Smart Help clients can Tap Into Over 160 Direct Staff Functional & Technical Resources On-Demand while maintaining elasticity and flexibility as the needs of your business change.

You can also meet the CE team virtually and learn about Smart Help On-Demand Support and Managed Services with CE Experts.

#OracleJDE #EnterpriseOne #JDE #JDEdwards #E1 #Innovate #ERP #Cloud #RPA #Chatbots #Mobile #IoT #UXOne #SmartHelp #ContinuousInnovation #YouMakeItHappen