How much does a R-VCS | SharpCloud app cost?

Pricing and costs for R-VCS |SharpCloud Apps

Before you decide to use one of our R-VCS apps, powered by the SharpCloud visual collaboration platform or create a specific SharpCloud application (Story), you will want to know what this is going to cost.

As you can imagine this is all depends on a lot of different aspects, which I am going to share with you so you can make an informed decision.  To do this I will break this down into 3 parts:

1. SharpCloud service
2. Configuration and deployment
3. Services and support

In each section I will provide a range of costs along with relevant tips and hints based on my experience using SharpCloud since 2009 and the  000’s of applications/Stories that I have created for clients across multiple industry sectors.

Before we get into the nitty gritty of costs, first lets have a look at a typical journey that our customers and potentially you will take, before making a decision to buy.

R-VCS | SharpCloud Customer Journey

The following 4 steps are taken with an indication of how long they take, some of which are free of charge!

1. Discovery Workshop (½ day):  This provides an opportunity for you to use one of our pre-configured R-VCS apps and experience the SharpCloud platform.  You will have a free 1/2 day facilitated workshop to identify what user case you want to trial, which you can test and use for 14 days, including free online support and meetings.
2. Proof of Concept (4 – 6 weeks):  Once you have identified a business user case, your solution is configured to create a Minimal Viable Product (MVP), populated with your data and used by a number of people in your business.  At the beginning, objectives and outcomes of the PoC are established and reviewed during and at the end of the PoC to establish whether this was a success or not.  If a success you will move onto the Pilot Phase  Just to note, a PoC is completed before purchasing annual subscriptions and will include consulting costs where appropriate.
3. Pilot Phase (6 to 12 weeks):  After successfully completing the PoC the PoC is configured further using the Minimal Viable Product (MVP) that will be used by your business and include the following steps.  At this stage SharpCloud subscriptions, R-VCS app(s) will be purchased and consulting services based on the agreed scope and outcome of the PoC:
   1. Discovery/Gap Analysis – Sprint 1 (2 weeks)
   2. Alpha – Sprint 2 (2/3 weeks)
   3. Beta – Sprint 3 (2/3 weeks)
   4. Rollout – Sprint 4 (2 weeks)
   5. Go Live
4. Support (9 months):  SharpCloud platform/service support is provided as part of the annual subscription by SharpCloud.  R-VCS app | SharpCloud Stories support is provided either as a percentage of the R-VCS app or can be a number of pre-purchased days.

The 4 step journey provides you an opportunity to verify that this is the right solution for your business and specific requirements.  As you move along the journey, the costs and associated details that I share with you now, act as a basis to start from and will be updated in a transparent way as you move along.

SharpCloud Service

SharpCloud is a low/no code visual collaboration platform delivered as Software -as-a-Service (SaaS) that visualises your data and facilitates collaboration and hybrid working.

The SharpCloud service is purchased as an annual subscription per user.  There are two main types of users that have different costs:

1. Viewer – these are users who can view the different Stories/User cases that you create.  Viewers can change and filter views to gain further insight and understanding but cannot save them.
2. Editor – an editor has access to all of the SharpCloud functionality and can create, edit and share Stories.  You can also be assigned an Administrator permission level, which allows you to create and manage teams, add users and set global parameters.

The service can be provided via public cloud on the Microsoft Azure platform with services from the USA, UK and Europe.  You can also have an on premise service.  Both services have different pricing.

As you increase the number of users so the pricing per user comes down.

There is also an Enterprise Viewer solution which enables you to provide viewing of Stories for anyone up to XXX people when they have the company @domain email.   This can include several  company domains which have different countries for example.

Below is a high level table of the user type and functionality so you can see what is included.

SharpCloud Costs

SharpCloud is a subscription based SaaS and can include public multi tenant cloud hosted on Microsoft Azure to private cloud or on premise installations.  If you select a private/on premise installation there are additional costs with regards to set up and periodic updates.

There is a minimum of 10 subscriptions  per annum that can be purchased on the public cloud service.  For private cloud/on premise this starts with a minimum of 100 users.  For subscription discounts this can be gained when purchasing more than 100 users and signing up for a 3 year subscription.

The costs per subscription have a range based on the number of subscriptions, service and installation.  For example of costs see the examples below.

For viewers a similar model is used and are purchased in buckets of 25, which can be flexible for existing customers.  There is also an option for Enterprise Publishing which is available based on number of subscriptions or if a Starter package is purchased or can be bought directly.

At this time SharpCloud do not publish their costs publicly.  For detailed costs please contact me to so that I can provide an estimate for you, taking in to account the various options as discussed above.

R-VCS and SharpCloud Configuration and Deployment

When you subscribe to the SharpCloud service you have all of the functionality available to use but there are no Stories, business user cases/application ready for you to use straight away.

You have two options:

1. Create your Story/user case from a blank story or a template
2. Select a R-VCS, (SharpCloud app) that has already been configured and is ready to use with some configuration where necessary to make it specific for you.

You will also need to decide what type of solution/user case you need to solve your problem.  Below are typical user case examples which you can develop yourself or use a R-VCS app instead.  There are cases where a specific R-VCS app does not exist but can be used as a template to create your specific user application.

Although there is an additional cost for a R-VCS app, this will save you time and therefore cost.  You can establish the cost benefit during the Discovery Workshop and PoC steps as shown above.

Examples of R-VCS | SharpCloud use cases

Various apps exist that can be a single story to a multiple project, programme, portfolio and enterprise portfolio structure.  These apps can be used in any industry sector for different types of projects, e.g. construction, IT, product, etc.

Below are a few examples.  Click here for more information, Roelto Visual Collaboration Solutions (R-VCS).

What impacts a R-VCS | SharpCloud App Cost?

As you can see from the list above the SharpCloud visual collaboration platform provides you with the opportunity to deliver many user cases to support your business collaboration, performance and productivity.

However, this flexibility and ability to visualise your data has an impact on the scope and time to configure your solution and therefore the cost.

Below I have listed some of the more common, key areas that impact costs and how you can manage them.

Start with the Why

Because you can create multiple type of solutions, you can spend a lot of time trying to decide what you should do first.  In some cases I find people start doing too many solutions and never fully complete them.  Its like a child going into a sweet shop, there is so much to choose from, tries them all and ends up not feeling very well!

R-VCS | SharpCloud has the biggest impact when you:

• Have “reporting” of data and information, that needs to be rolled up into programmes and portfolios and is completed manually, by people on a regular basis
• Need to connect your hybrid workers together and complete work such as a digital workshop
• Share information, communicate and facilitate collaboration both internally and externally

By focussing on these types of scenarios within your business, you can start to identify potential solutions to focus on, along with the expected outcomes/benefits and business processes that you could potentially improve.  Completing a SWOT or Makigami workshop can help you identify the “why” so you do not waste time, effort and costs.

By completing a Makigami workshop (simplification of end-to-end processes) you will identify who needs to be involved, their roles and responsibilities and the data sources.  This will help your identify what type and number of user subscriptions (Editor or Viewer) you need and what data integration/API’s are required, which will help you build up the costs in a realistic and pragmatic way.

Data Quality and Governance

Any IT solution or application relies on quality data – “garbage in is garbage out”.  For example if you put petrol into a diesel car, it will not work!

How you create, store, manage your data is critical.  Data governance is critical for every business ensuring the data throughout your business contributes positively to the performance of your business through:

• innovation in services, markets and business
• appropriate implementation and operation of assets
• clarity of responsibility and accountability for both the protection and potential to add value
• minimisation of adverse or unintended consequences

Refer to ISO  / IEC 38505-1 Information technology – Governance if IT – Governance of data for further guidance.

A lot of time can be spent cleansing your data, ensuring that data attributes are consistently applied, managed and used within your business.  This usually means you will need to work across functions to get an agreed and standardised core data model.

This can take a lot of time!  Without doubt, this is a necessity and the time and effort to complete should not to be underestimated.

However, visualising your data attributes and these differences can help you to rationalise, clean and standardise your data model.  Working with your IT function and stakeholders will help to co-create a core data model.

In some projects this is where I have spent most of the time and cost, as it is a change programme in itself.  However, the benefits are not just for your R-VCS SharpCloud app,  it is business wide benefit and importantly, supports the adoption of a data culture within your business.

Agree the outcomes

At the start, align your areas of interest as identified in the “Why” above to your strategy and define your outcomes – “what does good look like”.

These outcomes need to be co-created with your stakeholders to ensure you have their support to facilitate the changes, adoption and use of the solution.  Identifying the outcomes and their associated benefits will help you to define the key objectives, minimise “scope creep” and as a result you will deliver the outcomes successfully and within the estimated costs.

Also ask,

“What questions are we trying to answer that we cannot answer at the moment?”

This will help you to focus on areas of the business and processes where you have gaps, bottlenecks, lack of data and information to see how you could create data driven views that provide the answers to your questions.

Agile delivery

As you deliver your R-VCS | SharpCloud solutions, answers to you questions and the agreed outcomes, your users will identify other areas for improvement.  Taking an agile approach as shown above enables you to deliver functionality and benefits within days or a couple of weeks at most.

This iterative and continuous improvement approach helps to keep everyone engaged and again, you can create your R-VCS SharpCloud Roadmap (blueprint) to share and communicate with your stakeholders and business.  By adding an online form, people can submit their ideas for improvement, fostering innovation to create your backlog of requirements and projects, which can be reviewed and approved in a visual and transparent way.

R-VCS | SharpCloud Champions

As within any new system, tool or process, people need to be trained, coached and supported to ensure maximum benefit and outcomes are delivered.  During the activities listed above having people within your organisation assigned to become what I call “R-VCS | SharpCloud champions” – “super users”, will facilitate adoption, support and the creation of new applications and added value.

This enables you to be self supporting, reducing your operational costs and only rely on external support for guidance, advice or complex business solutions.

R-VCS | SharpCloud Support

Support costs are not always considered and sometimes might not always be required especially if you have developed an inhouse capability with your R-VCS | SharpCloud Champions.

There are two types of support you need to consider:

1. SharpCloud service support
2. R-VCS | SharpCloud App support

R-VCS | SharpCloud App Pricing

As discussed above, you can see there are several aspects that can affect the cost of your R-VCS | SharpCloud App.  There will be other areas to consider but if you focus on these it will help you to generate a good cost breakdown to support your business case and decision making process.

Below are some examples based on real life projects that have been delivered including the number of users, the user case and necessary support.

Hopefully this provides you with a framework and indicative prices for a R-VCS | SharpCloud application.

Where a range of costs has been provided the maximum value has been taken when providing the estimated total cost.

Consulting daily costs has used a blended rate.

Please note these costs exclude any expenses and applicable taxes.

Example 1 – Technology Roadmap

Example 2 – Project Portfolio Management

Example 3 – Dashboard Reporting

Example 4 – Digital Workshop

Calculating Your R-VCS | SharpCloud application cost

Hopefully you now have a better idea of how much your R-VCS | SharpCloud application is going to cost you.  Depending where you are along the R-VCS | SharpCloud Customer Journey, taking this 4 step approach will help you make informed decisions based on the benefits you will get and along with their associated costs.

Typically an “As Is” and a “To Be” will be produced so you can see how much time and cost you will save.

One of the key benefits will be the elimination of non added value administration tasks, such as the copying and pasting of data from spreadsheets, creating and updating PowerPoint presentations and then having to email them to share.

Then, the whole process is repeated again on a weekly or monthly basis – “wash, rinse and repeat!”

The time you save can include hundreds of days per annum, especially on enterprise type solutions, such as project portfolio management.