LawsonGuru Blog

Over the past year or so, Lawson has been expanding their support offerings.  It used to be that you had just one option: “Maintenance and Support”. 

This meant that everybody (presumably) was treated the same, had the same response time, etc.  Now Lawson offers four tiers of support as part of its “Total Care” package:

• Bronze: The basic support option, entitling you to upgrades and and is the default option you are used to–; you continue
• Silver: In addition to the Bronze benefits, this option gives you 24×7 emergency support as well as an annual performance assessment.  You also get priority response time compared to Bronze customers.
• Gold: adds the installation of fixes and support of customizations, performance tuning, and a 24×7 Lawson Support contact.
• Platinum: For customers who want Lawson to do it all, including hosting the Lawson applications.

What’s interesting about all of this is that–at the same time that Lawson is offering customers more choices, SAP is offering less–choice that is.  And raising their prices as well. SAP is migrating everyone to its Enterprise Support (they used to offer “Standard” and “Premium”) and charging 22% of license fees–a pretty substantial increase for those customers who used to pay 17% for Standard support: 

• http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/erp/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=209100536
• http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Enterprise-Applications/SAP-Imposes-Single-Tier-ERP-Support-Program/
• http://fscavo.blogspot.com/2008/07/mad-as-hell-backlash-brewing-against.html
• http://www.cio.com/article/332463/SAP_Raises_Software_Maintenance_Fees_for_New_Customers

One of Lawson’s key selling points over the past few years is their lower TCO; this gives them another opportunity to differentiate themselves.