One consideration when procuring a new SaaS system is the burden of work it places on your organisation’s digital partner. This is sometimes called a system’s infrastructure provider or network support or ICT Partner. They provide the hardware (PCs, servers, internet, networking, tablets, etc) and systems expertise to support your business.
The work they have to do to allow you to use a SaaS product varies. Many SaaS providers claim there is no requirement so long as there is a browser capability. However, that is rarely true. Conversely, it is not unknown for digital partners who have won the contract to support a large organisation to abuse their monopoly position. They may charge for much more work than is required. It could be that they have won your systems business at a low cost or even a loss making rate. Thus they need to squeeze more revenue from your organisation for every variation to the standard contract. We once had a situation where we helped our local parish council with a small internet service at zero cost and the IT outsourcing company (at the time) took a month to estimate that it would be £750 plus VAT to change an A record to point to it. This task would take a competent individual five minutes. In another example, we won a project for £500k with a central government department and their FM supplier demanded £75k to load the software on the servers. Thus, it is crucial that you have the tools to estimate what is a fair budget level for all parties concerned and to protect the public purse.
How to estimate the Footprint for an AXLR8 public sector SaaS solution.
Here is a list of the tasks that will be required so that you can estimate the costs. As ever, we start with a list of services that need to be provided. The data below is drawn from 24 years providing the AXLR8 SaaS system to the public sector.
It is important to note that most of the tasks listed below require highly knowledgeable professionals carrying a heavy responsibility in a complex technical environment.
| Task | Rationale | AXLR8 time | DP time |
| Providing fixed external IP addresses | Allows AXLR8 to lock the system to those users who are using the portals from inside your organisation’s network. | 20mins | 10mins |
| Security Audit | Your organisation must check AXLR8 comply with government security standards. This normally means providing a questionnaire and detailed technical scrutiny of the results. It may be that your DP also contracted with you to assist with DPIA. Please note that, with services like RiskLedger becoming more common, this work will be much reduced for all parties. |
8 hrs | 4 hrs |
| Email Deliverability | SPF and DKIM records must be added to allow AXLR8 systems to save automated messages on your behalf. We provide these and the DP must add them to the DNS. Also testing via a service like MX Toolbox.com. AXLR8 and the DP may need to add a subdomain if their SPF records are crowded. A subdomain is rarely justified and AXLR8 would charge for the extra email forwarding references. |
15 mins | 15 mins |
| Email Journaling | This allows AXLR8 Messagestore to (a) auto create Information Requests from incoming emails and to (b) store emails with the IRs for efficiency and audit purposes. Work description: add a journal to the Exchange or Google G-Suite email services to blind copy <xxxx>@jjjj.messagestore.co.uk. Both parties must test. Typically, the whole matter is dealt with during a Teams meeting. |
30 mins | 30 mins |
| Public Disclosure Log | Simply add a link within the IG pages of your website. There is a second more expensive option: programming from our API. This work would be 3 hours for AXLR8 support and, maybe 8-12 hours for your web programmer. |
10 mins | 15 mins |
| Self service Form | Add a link or place in an iFrame to our DIY “self-service” form for applicants to enter their information requests. | 10 mins | 15 mins |
Maintenance
The work of maintaining the system is minimal. SPF records and other DNS and IP address changes are rare. In our experience they take place every five or more years. We have clients who have been with AXLR8 for 15 years and have had two changes.
Changes in Email service can bring with it some learning experiences. However, we can usually deal with these and the work required by the email admin managers is less than 1% of the total project undertaken to upgrade your major email version. Recently, a common example has been the move from Exchange on-prem to online.
We have high hopes that services like RiskLedger will reduce the work involved with security audits. Most ask the same questions of suppliers. Many are copied from other model questionnaires. One client was happy to accept the security audit of a neighbouring local authority and that saved both of us 80% of the work.
AXLR8 provide training, support and maintenance. It is hard to see how a local outsourced DP can add a cost to duplicate that service.
Future trends
There are some tasks which will take less professional time in future. The work of security auditing has become stricter. However, it has also become formulaic and standards certification quality is rising.
It has become acceptable to direct the web visitor to the standard public portal of an SaaS supplier like AXLR8. Costly bespoke programming of an API is not necessary.
Conclusions
It should not take more than a day of work by your Digital Partner to allow implementation of an AXLR8 SaaS system for your team. It is difficult to see how more than a four figure sum could be quoted for the ICT support partner to undertake 6 hours of work even if it rounds up to a day with correspondence.
In summary, £1000-£2000 plus VAT should be a top end budget.
