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How are on-prem customers coping with current times?

  • 1.  How are on-prem customers coping with current times?

    Posted 03-25-2020 12:50
    Most of our customers are in the cloud one way or the other, variants of "shelter in place" aren't affecting them much that way. (The quality of their businesses is another thing, though.)

    I'm curious to know what your customers who do not already have a "work from home" architecture are doing. Are they having their IT turn on RDP? Going full panic to a cloud host to change over? Ignoring the law and still in the office? Something else?

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    Jerry Norman
    VP, 90 Minds
    Smartbridge Partners
    512.419.1444 x112
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  • 2.  RE: How are on-prem customers coping with current times?

    Posted 03-25-2020 12:58
    I've had calls from 2 today in Indiana whom I certainly would not classify as "essential" (RV supplier and maybe I could stretch on the other one, who supplies air tanks to semis, among other things)...  The book jobber portion of Notre Dame has closed up shop and the few people that can work from home are, but they have no way to reroute their phone calls for someone to take phone orders, so basically there is nothing for anyone to DO at home.

    And in Florida, we just keep fiddling while Naples burns.

    ------------------------------
    Beth Bowers
    Mom to Samson, Peanut, ChiChi, Canton, Cagney and Daisy (NO Oxford comma - shriek!)
    Beth Bowers
    269-445-1625
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  • 3.  RE: How are on-prem customers coping with current times?

    Posted 03-25-2020 13:21

    All of my clients have on premise ERP systems and so far none of them have completely shuttered. Those that ship product are mostly managing the order process from home, but their warehouses are still open to ship and receive. All of my clients already had some form of remote access configured for at least some users, so the architecture existed for them to work remotely. However, many had to purchase more remote desktop licenses to accommodate the influx of teleworkers. Some of our manufacturing clients are starting to see order cancellations and have begun laying off fabrication staff. We also have many clients who have put hard holds on things like upgrades and new system implementations. The environment is certainly challenging, but so far (knock on wood) having an on premise ERP has not been a major issue for our clients. We have had some minor issues with printers (mostly related to Paperless Office) and accessing network resources over the VPN, but these have been handled pretty easily with a few minutes of training or coordination with the client's IT team. Overall, I have been pleasantly surprised at how well our clients have transitioned to teleworking. It's not ideal, but it is working and they are able to do what they need to do to keep their businesses running.



    ------Original Message------

    I've had calls from 2 today in Indiana whom I certainly would not classify as "essential" (RV supplier and maybe I could stretch on the other one, who supplies air tanks to semis, among other things)...  The book jobber portion of Notre Dame has closed up shop and the few people that can work from home are, but they have no way to reroute their phone calls for someone to take phone orders, so basically there is nothing for anyone to DO at home.

    And in Florida, we just keep fiddling while Naples burns.

    ------------------------------
    Beth Bowers
    Mom to Samson, Peanut, ChiChi, Canton, Cagney and Daisy (NO Oxford comma - shriek!)
    Beth Bowers
    269-445-1625
    ------------------------------


  • 4.  RE: How are on-prem customers coping with current times?

    Posted 03-25-2020 14:12
    Most of my clients are on-prem and use VPN or a GoToMyPC type solution to effectively sit at their desk.  I haven't heard of any who shut down (at least not their back offices) and i realize I might not HEAR from the ones that shut down, so there may be some.  Many sound like they are still in their offices and I suggested we make going paperless in 2020 a goal so they don't have to come in to push paper around.

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    ==================
    Rhonda McNamara
    Customer Success Manager
    Stewart Technologies, Inc.
    rsm@stewarttechnologies.com
    ------------------------------



  • 5.  RE: How are on-prem customers coping with current times?

    Posted 03-25-2020 14:35
    These are interesting. Thanks. I hope we hear more. 

    This is the first day of the shelter-in-place rules in Austin; Dallas and Houston are already there, TX has rules, but not quite stringent. Given the news reports in the past two days about just how bad this illness can be even if you're healthy, I expect more businesses will disperse soon.

    It's good to hear so many are at least coping. I'm quite curious to see how their attitudes change or not after this towards moving things to a cloud vendor. Some have ease of use features in their local clients.

    ------------------------------
    Jerry Norman
    VP, 90 Minds
    Smartbridge Partners
    512.419.1444 x112
    ------------------------------

    Original Message


  • 6.  RE: How are on-prem customers coping with current times?

    Posted 03-25-2020 14:31

    We are hosting many of our Sage 100 clients on our hosted servers, so they are already set up to work remotely.  We heard last Thursday that there was probably going to be an announcement from our Governor about "Sheltering in Place", and so our IT phone lines started ringing off the hook with other clients asking us to help them get set up to work from home.   While a lot of our clients are indeed shut down, many of them are still up and running and are able to work remotely.   And most of our clients are accessing their Sage 100 via RDP.

     

    Sue Bennett | President

    P. 503 620 3484 | F. 503 620 2765

    12559 SW 69th Ave | Portland, OR  97223

    sue@benpor.com   www.benpor.com
    Bennett/Porter Blogs | facebook | twitter

    image003.png@01D5FE09.5956A8F0

     

     

     

     



    ------Original Message------

    Most of our customers are in the cloud one way or the other, variants of "shelter in place" aren't affecting them much that way. (The quality of their businesses is another thing, though.)

    I'm curious to know what your customers who do not already have a "work from home" architecture are doing. Are they having their IT turn on RDP? Going full panic to a cloud host to change over? Ignoring the law and still in the office? Something else?

    ------------------------------
    Jerry Norman
    VP, 90 Minds
    Smartbridge Partners
    512.419.1444 x112
    ------------------------------


  • 7.  RE: How are on-prem customers coping with current times?

    Posted 03-25-2020 17:15

    Personally I'm more than a bit nervous for two primary reasons:

    1. Unemployment numbers trickling in are looking to track like the 2008 Financial Crisis. This is going to have a massive trickle effect through our economy as laid off people slow / stop purchasing. Some people who live paycheck-to-paycheck will be severely compromised and possibly lose their homes. We'll be feeling this for the next few years unless some magic answer pops up.

    2. Customers that go from offices to remote aren't set up to do business that way. Yes, they might be able to access their software (not all are) but they will greatly slow down discussions "let's all go talk in the conference room" which will slow decisions which will impact all their work. Add that to #1 above and we have a recipe for "Dreaded No Decision" becoming the easy choice for the near future.

    I've been through this dance twice before ... does it ever get easier? :S 

    ​

    ------------------------------
    Peter Wolf
    Azamba Consulting Group
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  • 8.  RE: How are on-prem customers coping with current times?

    Posted 03-25-2020 18:18
    Peter - I'm with you. Many of these customers are just "making do" with their RDP setups. I think their attitudes about everything will be quite different in mid-April. It will be very hard, impossible actually, to lift any significant degree of these isolation orders unless we have a reliable mechanism of identifying who is carrying and who is recovered. Without that testing we can't do this, and the widespread testing appears to be more than a month away. With all this uncertainty, decisions will be few and slow.

    ------------------------------
    Jerry Norman
    VP, 90 Minds
    Smartbridge Partners
    512.419.1444 x112
    ------------------------------

    Original Message


  • 9.  RE: How are on-prem customers coping with current times?

    Posted 03-26-2020 08:07
    6 says ago I posted that VARS might be about to see the largest downturn of new and existing business they’ve ever encountered.

    I still see this as a reality. It’s going to take a while for businesses to bounce back.

    When they do I see a surge of interest in remote and cloud native computing.

    That’s before you factor in the potential policy changes a governmental change could bring ( election year ).

    If you stuck with hourly billing before this pandemic — I hope you have other streams of income as customers slam the brakes on all hourly consulting.

    And for those thinking you have no impact ( 95% of frontline workers think this )- subtract out the big project or two that you’re in the middle of then think again...



    ---------------------------------
    Wayne Schulz - Schulz Consulting - 860-516-8990
    ---------------------------------





  • 10.  RE: How are on-prem customers coping with current times?

    Posted 03-26-2020 10:10
    In the spirit of brainstorming revenue possibilities - here are some ideas off the top of my head. Feel free to chime in with others!
    • For new deals, Sage 100 could be positioned as a real value play for distributors / manufacturers who have outgrown QB. Cloud ERPs such as Acumatica / Netsuite may be the first choice for companies like these, but Sage 100 pricing could be compelling when compared to the sexy cloud solutions.
    • Existing clients: some may be downsizing admin staff to survive. This could present opportunities for consultants to create new outsource controller / system admin relationships
    • Analyze your client base by industry. Consider those industries with the biggest needs now, and setup a call with management to review all financial / operational aspects of the business to see what could be improved with technology now. Calls like these can at least you can help set the table for later.
    • Some clients may not renew maintenance now. Consider putting a fixed price support agreement in front of them so they can at least get support through you in the tough times. 


    ------------------------------
    Paul Ziliak
    co-f0under
    xkzero
    847-416-2009

    www.xkzero.com
    ------------------------------

    Original Message


  • 11.  RE: How are on-prem customers coping with current times?

    Posted 03-26-2020 16:35
    Do you think it would be worthwhile to hold a 90 Minds Town Hall virtual conference to share experiences, stories, and ideas related to all this?

    ------------------------------
    Jerry Norman
    VP, 90 Minds
    Smartbridge Partners
    512.419.1444 x112
    ------------------------------

    Original Message


  • 12.  RE: How are on-prem customers coping with current times?

    Posted 03-31-2020 16:50
    We created an Office2Home service for fixed fee hosting for on premise customers.  So far we have had a number inquiries and one customer already going live with the offering. Most customers have some remote access capability and with shutter in place, only essential businesses seem to be keeping everyone using the systems while others are turning down the total number of users.

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    Gary Feldman
    President
    I-Business Network, LLC
    Marietta GA
    6786270646 x224
    http://www.i-bn.com/
    ------------------------------



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