4 Factors That Affect the Cost of Oracle EPM Managed Services [ROI Calculator]

Let’s face it. Cost is a key factor in decision-making — more often than not, it is the factor.

The cost to support and administer an Oracle EPM environment is expensive. Oracle EPM support services can remove the burden of human capital that is focused on non-business-driving administrative tasks and provide you with an alternative solution that fits within your budget. To gauge how much you can save with managed services, keep these factors in mind.

Level of Support

Your decision to leverage managed services could be driven by a number of reasons: a recently departed admin, a newly implemented application, or the need for a backup to your team, to name a few. What activities will your team continue to perform, and what would you prefer managed services handle? Determine how much you are capable of taking on in-house.

The cost of managed services is driven by price and volume. How much support will you need on a monthly, quarterly, and yearly basis? Scope out your activity level by identifying recurring tasks and how often you have break/fix issues. Are you looking to enhance your system’s capabilities? You may be behind on applying patches to get your system current.

Also consider the higher value of proactive support compared to a traditional annual hourly contract.

Mix of Technologies

Oracle EPM support services help you manage all EPM and BI technologies, whether on-prem or cloud. The number of and complexity of your applications and technologies will affect the cost of supporting your environment due to the variety of technical skill sets required from the supporting team.

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Application vs. Infrastructure Needs

Determine if your needs will revolve more around the finance user community, traditional IT support for your Oracle EPM environment, or both — this will be a cost-driving factor. Application support generally involves helping the finance user community with any issues that arise in day-to-day functional operations, such as assistance with an Essbase data load or modifying and creating a Planning business rule.

Examples of infrastructure support are services that need to be frequently restarted, annual health checks for outdated Hyperion technology that is no longer supported by Oracle, and applying patches. More than likely, your support needs will be a mix of both application and infrastructure, but keep in mind that cost is proportional to technical difficulty.

Location

Oracle EPM managed services support is typically provided by a remote team that may or may not be local to your area. There may be times when you need or want a resource to travel to your location and work on-site with your team. In these instances, travel expenses will likely be an added cost. Consider screen-sharing options such as WebEx as a much more affordable alternative to travel time and added expense.

Keeping these cost factors in mind when deciding on your support services engagement will go a long way in setting your expectations as well as preparing and budgeting for your services. A thorough scoping session with your Oracle EPM managed services partner will help you define your support needs and the best option for you. Download our services guide to learn more.