Many software businesses have been criticised for locking-in customers who later discover how costly it will be for them to switch to another supplier. This criticism is fully justified, in our view, and Couraud has since its earliest days been an advocate of extractable data.

The fact is, it's really not difficult to extract data from a database to an Excel spreadsheet or flat file.

Much harder is remodelling or interpreting the data so that it can be imported into a new vendor's system. Any sensible vendor however will make this as cheap and easy as possible, ensuring it doesn't become an obstacle to winning the contract.

We recommend that all buyers examine their suppliers' policies (and related costs) for data extraction before entering into any contracts. It really should not be expensive, time consuming or difficult: and I would be suspicious of anyone that says otherwise.