Nine Questions to Ask your Software Provider Following an Acquisition
If your housing software provider has recently been acquired by another company, there’s probably a lot going through your mind. With any acquisition, there can be uncertainty and anxiety associated with the event, but our industry is especially susceptible due to HUD’s constant changes. Typically, after an acquisition, there are questions that need to be answered, and how they are addressed will determine the future direction and the stability of your Housing Authority moving forward.
When companies are acquired, the organization that’s doing the acquiring has to consider the amount of duplication that is occurring within each department. For instance, do they want to triple the cost of doing all of HUD’s changes for all three products? To make things more complicated, there could be three or four versions of the product within an individual software system. The big question that the acquiring company has to ask themselves is: “Should we move customers to the new system quickly to increase revenue because of the purchase?”
We know the acquisition process can be daunting, unpredictable and confusing for both parties involved, especially the Housing Authority. We put together a list of questions to ask your acquiring software vendor in order to demystify the process and prepare your agency for what’s ahead.
Here are the nine questions a PHA should ask their acquiring software company:
- Will I have to move to another system?
- Will you give me two to three years advance notice of End of Life for my product?
- How long will I have before I have to move?
- Are you going to continue to offer updates to our system?
- Will the product features be the same in the new product?
- Will I receive the new software for free and just have to pay for services?
- How will my historical data be converted?
- Can I convert a portion of my system to the new product or do I have to jump to the new product completely?
- If I have custom Interfaces, letters and reports do they get converted? Do I have to pay for them again?
If you feel you’re not getting a good response from your vendor after asking these questions, maybe it’s time to consider other options. If you decide to explore what other housing software is available, why not look at Emphasys Software? We’ve been serving the affordable housing market for over 40 years and offer a fully integrated Windows-based suite of modules built specifically for PHAs. We’d be happy to introduce you to the Emphasys Elite software.
