Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions can be a critical asset for any business – but at the same time, it’s also important to understand that no two solutions are created equally. If you truly want to make sure that you’re investing in something that will support and empower your business and its people, there is one key calculation you need to make: True Cost.
Breaking Down True Cost For Your Next ERP
Any ERP system you research will have a dollar value attached to it – but in a lot of ways, that’s just the beginning of a much longer story. To find out what you’ll really be spending, you need to find two key numbers: your return on investment (ROI) and your total cost of ownership (TCO).
Return on investment encompasses all of the “value” that your ERP generates – both in terms of tangible benefits like increased sales and those that are hard to measure like employee satisfaction gains.
Total cost of ownership involves all costs associated with owning and maintaining that system over a period of between seven and then years. Keep in mind that your annual maintenance fee alone will usually be about 18% of the list price of the software.
If you take take your ROI and subtract from it your TCO, you arrive at your True Cost: the actual cost of the ERP.
Investing in a solution like Acumatica can help decrease this True Cost as much as possible, not only by way of lower upfront costs (thanks to new deployment options like SaaS) but also a system that will grow with you, at your pace, without all of the hidden costs and fees. But regardless, it’s critical that you find out this True Cost for any system you decide to go with before you pull the trigger. Only then will you be confident that you have a solution that is actually propelling your business forward, instead of holding it back.