Packaged implementation solutions combine software and services related to a particular business or scope of work performed for a customer. Because the vendor defines scope of work carefully, the package also includes a fixed price.
We can identify three types packaged solutions:
- Services only
- Software and related services
- Hardware, software, and related services
Services only
At the most basic level, vendors sell defined services (based on fixed price, scope, and deliverables) that cover a particular software module or business process. Asuret calls these packaged services. Packaged services generally support a specific, and well-defined, implementation issue, problem, or need.
Software and related services
To offer a more complete solution, some vendors create a package by bundling software configured for a specific business process with fixed-price implementation services.
To be complete, these packaged offerings, solutions, should include:
- Off-the-shelf enterprise software with defined business processes
- Configuration information, such as content configured for a specific industry or process, use cases, scenarios, business rules, and reporting features (such as dashboards)
- Standardized user enablement and education content such as help systems, training, courseware, workshops, including pre-defined content
- Standardized consulting enablement content, such as installation and configuration guides, templates, accelerators, and test scripts
- Fixed-price services for installing, configuring, and implementing the preconfigured software, delivering the standard user enablement content, and guidelines for integrating with other systems
Hardware, software, and related services
To achieve higher levels of integration, vendors can add pre-configured hardware to the mix of software, content, and services. Adding hardware (either server or appliance) to a packaged solution further decreases the extent to which customers must consider system, infrastructure, and integration issues during an implementation.
This packaging simplifies the buying and implementation process by controlling implementation variables. Interestingly, software as a service (SaaS) goes even further, by moving infrastructure responsibilities from the customer to the cloud provider.
