SAP Planning: Best Practices in Implementation

What Is Total Cost of Ownership?

With your vision for 80-90% of the SAP solution decided, core Technical Support Organization players in place, general availability and performance requirements nailed down, knowledge of your technical organization’s core competencies, and an initial budget approved, you are ready to perform the first of many TCO exercises.

But first, what exactly is TCO? Rather than attempting a long-winded all-encompassing definition, consider the following, and refer to Figure 5.1 for a comprehensive visual look at TCO:

• TCO analysis is all about determining how to get the best business solution for the least money. But it’s much more complex than simply determining the relationship between computing power and budgets. Instead, ...