What an ERP costs — and what that price is made of
No serious vendor will quote a price before seeing the scope, and that is not evasion. But the structure of the cost can be explained up front — here it is, including the items most often missed.
- Published
- Author
- Konis Software
The question “how much does an ERP cost” almost never gets an answer online, for a reason that is not a conspiracy: the price of an ERP is not the price of a product but the price of a scope. The same system for a company with five users and one warehouse, and for one with eighty users, three legal entities and production, differs several times over — not because the price list is elastic, but because those are not the same job.
What can be said in advance, and what this piece does, is what the price consists of and what moves it. With that framework quotes become comparable, which in practice is more useful than a single number that would apply to somebody else's company anyway.
The five items that make up the total cost
| Item | What it is | When it is paid |
|---|---|---|
| Licence / subscription | The right to use the system — per user, per module, or a combination | Monthly or annually, for as long as it is used |
| Implementation | Process analysis, configuration, posting rules, code lists, documents | One-off, mostly before go-live |
| Data migration | Moving partners, items, opening balances and open items | One-off, usually underestimated |
| Integrations | Banks, e-invoicing, fiscalization, web shop, couriers, existing systems | One-off per integration, plus maintenance |
| Training and support | Role-based training, post-go-live support, later changes | One-off + ongoing |
What actually moves the price
The factors below are not discounts or surcharges but a description of the work. When a vendor asks for these, they are not stalling — without them any figure they name is a guess.
- **Number of users and their roles.** Ten people who issue invoices is not the same as ten people who each do something different.
- **Number of legal entities and currencies.** A second entity is not double, but it is not free either — it needs its own ledger, its own periods and consolidation.
- **Industry.** Production with bills of material and work orders is the most expensive to implement; services the cheapest; trade sits between, depending on the warehouse.
- **Warehouse complexity.** One warehouse without locations versus bin locations, lots, expiry dates and wave picking — those are different systems, not different settings.
- **Number of integrations.** Each is a separate job with its own testing and its own maintenance.
- **The state of the data being moved.** A clean code list and tidy open items are the largest possible saving; duplicate partners and unreconciled opening balances are the largest hidden cost.
The items most often missed
These are costs that usually do not appear in a quote because the vendor does not create them — but the company pays them all the same.
- 1
Your own team's time
Implementation needs people who know how the company actually works, and those are as a rule the busiest people. Their hours are a real project cost, even though they never enter the quote.
- 2
Parallel running
The period of working in both the old and the new system is necessary for a safe cutover, and it costs — in hours, not in licences.
- 3
Localization on foreign systems
Serbian payroll, the cash desk, travel orders and the statutory registers arrive on foreign systems as a partner add-on with its own price and its own upgrade cycle. That is a separate vendor, not a line in the same quote.
- 4
Changes after the first year
Processes change and so does the law. It is worth asking up front how a change that is not a defect is charged — and whether configuration requires a developer.
Cloud or your own server
The difference is not only technical but also in the shape of the cost. A cloud subscription is an operating cost that starts immediately and requires no capital outlay. Installing on your own infrastructure requires a server, its maintenance, backups and somebody to do that work — often a larger cost than it appears while only the hardware is being counted.
For most companies up to roughly a hundred users, cloud is cheaper across three years, simply because the subscription also hides work somebody would otherwise have to do. An on-premise installation makes sense when a regulation, a customer contract or existing infrastructure that is maintained anyway calls for it.
How to ask for a quote you can actually compare
If every vendor is asked for the same shape of answer, the quotes become comparable even without a shared price list.
- Ask for the total cost across three years, broken into all five items — not just the monthly licence.
- Ask for what IS and what IS NOT in the implementation scope, named by process.
- Ask what happens to the price when the user count grows by a third.
- Ask whether configuration changes by settings or by programming — and who owns those changes at upgrade time.
- Ask for localization (payroll, cash desk, travel orders, statutory registers) to be listed as an item with a vendor's name on it — theirs or someone else's.
- Ask what leaving looks like: in what form you get your data back.
One closing note, true of every quote on the market and not only ours: implementation cost is the part of the total the company itself influences most. Clean code lists, an agreed process and people who are available shorten a project more than any discount does.