[Linux-aus] Candidacy Support Statement - President or Ordinary Council Member

[Andrew Bartlett]

On Wed, 2016-12-07 at 02:33 -0500, David Lloyd wrote:
>  
> You’ve limped along without a $23K CRM until now; I really can’t see
> how CiviCRM or SugarCRM (which is actually less hassle to setup than
> CiviCRM and has a backer less likely to disappear) costs $23K.
>  
> Let me make a counter proposal: employ someone whose cost and expense
> is $17,000 to work with the currenct systems. You’ve just saved
> $6,000.

G'Day David,

Can you flesh this out a bit more?  I understand from the tread that
the MemberDB author (Stewart Smith if I recall) suggested that moving
to CiviCRM.

As someone working professionally in open source software development
for hire, my general experience is that $17,000 at
consultant/contractor rates doesn't buy much in terms of a major
software overhaul, which seems to be what is requested.  It certainly
seems from the things Kathy described as limitations that we are beyond
minor just works.

My main thought on your proposal is that Linux Australia would end up
with the execution risk (is the money spent well, regression, etc) and
keep the maintenance burden of a bespoke system, rather than having a
vendor with an SLA and a quoted migration price.  That could easily eat
up any 'savings'. 

Given LA is an organisation turning over 1millon per year, paying for a
few things in the services area, particularly if it avoids paying staff
to push paper around and do things manually, seems very good value.

Thanks,

Andrew Bartlett

-- 
Andrew Bartlett                       http://samba.org/~abartlet/
Authentication Developer, Samba Team  http://samba.org
Samba Developer, Catalyst IT          http://catalyst.net.nz/services/samba