About Forrester
Forrester Research, Inc. is an independent research company that provides pragmatic and forward-thinking advice to global leaders in business and technology.

Liz, who is based in Cambridge, Mass., serves Sourcing & Vendor Management Professionals. She has been a featured speaker at leading industry events such as SaaScon, Nasscom, Society of Information Managers, and World BPO Forum. Liz has been quoted in leading publications including The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, The New York Times, and CIO Magazine. Liz has been featured as an expert in software-as-a-service (SaaS) on TV news segments, including Boston-based NECN, and was recognized as the IIAR Services analyst of the year for 2010.
Her key research areas include SaaS and enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation with a focus on SAP and Oracle implementation. In the SaaS space, Liz helps clients evaluate the SaaS model, including SaaS pricing and licensing; best practices for contract negotiation, benefits, and tradeoffs of SaaS deployment; and strategies and considerations for maximizing the value of SaaS investments. In the ERP implementation space, Liz helps clients understand the ERP implementation provider landscape as well as best practices for provider selection, RFPs for implementation projects, and provider governance models.
Prior to joining Forrester in 2002, Liz worked at the US Department of Transportation's Volpe Center, programming a computer simulator to test equipment for GPS-based ship navigation. Liz also worked as a researcher at the MIT Media Lab, programming "smart" objects that sense and "think" and researching electronic ballot user experience as part of the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project. Prior to working at the MIT Media Lab, Liz worked in the COMDEX division of Ziff Davis.
Liz holds a B.S. in computer science and electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Can Forrester provide some guidance and/or language to address both the turnover ratio during the duration of the project and skill set levels?
Is it standard practice for a SaaS vendor to require a prospective customer to pay a full year's worth of fees even though the prospect will not begin to use the SaaS offering until midyear?
What should be considered when putting together a contract for a partnership with a SaaS supplier?
How can sourcing executives work with business executives to ensure that service-level agreements (SLAs) translate into high availability of software-as-a-service (SaaS) for users?
What are some supplier candidates for a request for proposal (RFP) for SAP Basis work?
Can Forrester supply any general benchmarking on hourly IT consulting rate ranges for various skill sets for the major players?
Do you have any recent articles about why you should outsource SAP support? What were some of the reasons/drivers causing business and IT to consider outsourcing?
What is the right model for ongoing governance of SaaS? What issues should we prepare our organization for?
What are other companies who have cloud sourced some of their apps doing about cloud-based app support team setup? Is it centralized or dispersed?
What are the rates for SAP resources?
How have rates for SAP skills been trending over the past few years, both onshore and offshore?
What are the standards for uptime agreements, particularly in on-demand or SaaS-type agreements?
What are some key categories to check for when reviewing a SaaS contract?
We are working through contracting with a company and are trying to avoid the pitfalls we have faced with other vendors regarding pithy SLAs. We are looking for advice/best practices and real-world...
I wanted to know the overall market potential for Oracle apps implementation as well as its market potential within different verticals, products and geographies.
Does Forrester have any perspective on the option of packaged solutions such as SAP or Oracle versus “do it yourself”?
What are some enterprise resource planning (ERP) success stories and metrics?
Does Forrester have any longer-range projections for software-as-a-service (SaaS) uptake in the market over the next three to six years to help us plan our application strategy?
What are some examples of SaaS availability metrics?
Are there any studies that compare the trends of software-as-a-service (SaaS) versus traditional perpetual software licensing and/or the right to use licenses?
We are currently reviewing our strategy for how many systems integrators (SIs) we should have for multiple SAP projects and programs. We are also interested in understanding the views on combining...
What are the typical rates for IT and business change consultancy services currently negotiated with key partners (consultancy firms)?