This blog entry is the first of three planned blog entries concerning
Fellowship One pricing. Subsequent entries will address the Total Cost of
Ownership (TCO) concept and a look at the Value-based Pricing (VBP) concept of
software.
At the recent NACBA conference in Chicago, Jeff Pelletier and I conducted a
break-out workshop about Fellowship One. I started out the presentation with a
series of myths and misconceptions concerning Fellowship Technologies and our
flagship product, Fellowship One. Among the misconceptions I presented was
around the belief that Fellowship One is expensive.
First, let’s understand that the term expensive is a relative term. I will
talk more about that in the Value-Based Pricing discussion, but for now let’s
assume that the relativity of the word “expensive” is a non-issue; let’s first
look at what a church gets for its monthly fee.
When a church compares the monthly cost of Fellowship One to its current
solution, many people note that the cost is often several times to many times
more expensive than what they are used to paying for their current system.
However, in most cases, this is not an apples-to-apples comparison. When
comparing software solutions, one should consider everything the entire church,
not just a few core users, is getting for that price.
For any system, legacy or new, a church must consider the incremental cost to
not only buy but to also maintain the system. True, a church can save some
money by cutting corners and not doing certain things they ought to (system
back-ups come to mind!), but for discussion purposes here, I will consider that
churches perform the duties that are recommended in conjunction with all
computer systems. So what does a F1 customer get for its money?
With Fellowship One, the monthly cost includes not just access to an
enterprise software solution (this would be the licensing portion), but also the
following:
- Up-to-date, fully-redundant, hardware (currently 3 full racks of servers) to
operate the transactions;
- Up-to-date application and operating system software to operate the
hardware;
- Unparalleled security when compared to what the church can offer locally;
Your data is housed in a Tier-1 data center capable of withstanding an F5
tornado (twice the strength of a Category 5 hurricane); And we submit regular
external security scans to further ensure your data.
- Regular on-site and off-site data backups; We backup your data continually
and take a copy off-site regularly. If your church office is destroyed, your
data is safe with us and can be accessed from any Internet access point.
- New software features and capabilities which are constantly being
developed;
- “No touch, no sweat” upgrades – these new capabilities are automatically
added to the system without customer intervention;
- Applications assistance through calls and emails into our technical support
group with the broadest support coverage in the industry – Standard support is
available 6am to 10pm CT, 7 days per week and emergency support is available
round-the-clock; Although not perfect by any stretch, we consistently receive
high accolades from our customers about our support.
- A broad base of knowledge concerning church best practices from our Delivery
Services group who have implemented F1 across our entire install base;
- Proactive customer care based on our monitoring of the system’s usage to
ensure that the capabilities are being best utilized and to help in those cases
were portions of the system is left idle.
Now consider the following questions in comparing what you currently get from
your church software vendor:
- What hardware and system software does your system operate on? Both of
these areas advance so quickly that for many it is hard to stay up with. Is your
IT staff or consultant always keeping your systems up-to-date?
- Are you doing all of the required system maintenance? Are data backups
performed every night? What happens if a hurricane or fire destroys the church?
How secure is your data, could someone simply break an window and take off with
your server(s)?
- Does your current ChMS vendor help you get the most out of the system? Or
are you left on your own when it comes to implementation best practices and
support?
- What is the quality of your vendor’s support responses and when are they
available? Many of our customers have said that they first came looking for a
new solution because they could not get their current vendor to return their
phone calls. And when is the vendor’s support available? Most are only
available on THEIR schedule, 8 – 5pm, Monday to Friday. Sadly, many are not
available during the most critical period for a church, the weekend.
- How was the last upgrade by your vendor supplied? Many of our customers
came from an environment where they were afraid to install a new release for
fear that it would takes weeks or even months to recover from the new bugs
introduced into the system. If that’s the case, what new features are you
missing out on? With Fellowship One, our customers are always on the latest and
greatest release.
- If you are not using the features of your current system, how does your
vendor help you implement the other things you are paying for? Do they even know
whether you are using the system to its full extent? At Fellowship Technologies,
we recently established a “Customer Care” group to proactively assist our
customers to get the most out of Fellowship One. We think this will improve the
adoption rate of some of the system’s most valuable capabilities.
As you can see, what a Fellowship One customer receives is far beyond simply
a disk and some documentation. Now that you know all that is included, in my
next blog I will address the Total Cost of Ownership of a software solution.
This should help a church determine all things that come into the equation when
considering the “true cost” of its current system.
Grace to you,
jhook