7 Important business considerations for sticking with Cherwell

1. Assess the true cost of running Cherwell

This should be your primary concern. Consider what the running costs of Cherwell are likely to be over the next few years, from the perspective of licensing, support and hosting. That should be relatively easy if you have an existing system in place, your employees know how to use it and you have an administrator – but if any of those things change, this could significantly change your running costs.

It’s also worth thinking ahead of what the cost of moving to another system might be, should that be a possibility or a necessity. This is more of an unknown quantity and you need to ask, from an expenditure point of view: What would the move cost? How long would it take? And what elements of functionality that you have currently within Cherwell wouldn’t you be able to move across to another platform? (See also point 4, below.)

2. Be ready for reduced budgets

It’s inevitable that, for a large number of organisations in the near future, there will be a tightening of belts due to the economic conditions. This could go right across the board and affect staffing, capex, borrowing for capex and day-to-day budgeting.

Think back to the start of this year and how much things have changed since then – so how likely is it that your budget will still be the same next year? Then ask: Will it support moving to a new system or do you need to leverage what you have already? And if it’s the latter, what is that likely to cost?

3. Think about ongoing staff costs and requirements

In relation to the above, think about how reduced budgets will impact your ability to retain staff – and how the current labour shortage might also affect this. If you’re in a Cherwell ‘holding pattern’, waiting to migrate elsewhere or see what happens with Ivanti, do you actually need to pay a member of staff to manage the system? For many organisations, moving to a managed service from a third-party provider could make more sense from both a practical and financial perspective.

4. Be ready to migrate to Ivanti

Whatever Ivanti decide to do with Cherwell, there will be at least some level of convergence with their own systems. Or it’s possible that Cherwell completely disappears and becomes completely subsumed by Ivanti. Either way, there will be differences in the technical aspects and functionality of the system that your administrators will need to learn how to manage.

Again, there’s an important business decision to make about what the cost implications of this could be.

5. Think about renewing your licence now

If you’re certain you want to stick with Cherwell and are looking for, say, another three years for your licence, you need to renew it or ask for an extension right now – even if there’s time left on your current deal.

That’s because a year from now, or maybe less, Ivanti may no longer offer a simple Cherwell renewal as an option, instead preferring to move you to a more closely converged product.

6. Consider asking for a permanent licence

This may be a slightly left-field option, and definitely isn’t for everyone. But for some organisations it’s worth asking the question, as Cherwell’s original model was based on selling permanent on-premise licences. In this scenario, you’d pay a one-off fee to hold a licence ad infinitum, which may well turn out to be a cost-effective option over a three- to five-year period.

This is particularly worth considering if you have a highly bespoke system that’s heavily configured to suit your own business, as you may be in a situation where any other platform is unlikely to be able to match that level of alignment – or the conversion costs might be prohibitive.

It might also be a good option if you’ve recently moved to Cherwell and don’t want to migrate elsewhere so soon. If you go down this route, you’ll need to consider where you’ll host the system – either on premise or with a third party – and what will happen once there is no longer any support.

7. Have an exit plan

You should bear in mind that moving away from Cherwell might at some point be inevitable for your organisation, so it’s worth having that exit plan tucked away in a drawer, just in case.

An important part of that should be understanding what business processes your system is helping to deliver and what you would have to replace were you to move. Also, you’ll need to be aware that some functionality in Cherwell, such as facilities management, isn’t necessarily present in other solutions.