Mar 18th 1999: British Telecom today announced a $200 per user per month SAP rental package with a 10-day implementation process and a $2,500 (£1,500) setup cost.

The offering is the first of a series planned by the UK telco as part of a new online application rental service launched today. Called BusinessManager, its aim is to offer top-tier applications for rent to small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs), targetting organisations with between 20 and 500 employees.

The SAP package is based on the finance and payroll modules of the vendor's R/3 enterprise resource planning (ERP) suite. BT has created a template-based implementation of the package designed to require only a few days' configuration before it is ready for use. "We've basically taken the SAP software and transformed it to make it really adapted to the needs and requirements of SMEs," said Eric Guilloteau, general manager of BT's e-business division, speaking to ASP News Review today.

The setup cost of approximately £1,500 includes installation of the ISDN or other connection, consultancy to prepare the implementation, and user training. All other costs are absorbed into a quarterly rental which varies according to the specific number of applications, users and sites that the customer opts to include in the service. Guilloteau said a typical 400-employee company taking payroll and finance for 15 users on a single site would pay a price of £380 ($620) per user per quarter.

Total turnround time from confirmation of order to going live is six weeks, said Guilloteau, which includes from three to ten days for the implementation work itself. "We've made this available to SMEs at the flick of a button," he said.

BT allows users a six-month pilot period before committing to a three-year contract. Some pilots are already in operation having gone live as a part of a pre-launch trial in December and January.

The telco has more applications from SAP and other vendors waiting in the wings to add to the BusinessManager portfolio, including human resources, customer relationship management and logistics.

"We are very excited about this," said Guilloteau. "We really believe this is an innovative service that will transform the way that SMEs will compete."