The CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems are moving from being just optional tools to the most important and necessary tools to help the business grow and compete. Cost of CRM system definitely is as important. The CRM pricing exceeds the cost of software and the technology behind it.

Below are some of the points of CRM pricing you have to consider while project budgeting, assessing the quotes provided by the software vendor or may be just to get the realistic idea about the expenditure:

1. Price of Software:

It includes the prices of:

• Software licenses
• Software maintenance

2. Cost of Professional Service:

Professional services are the services you need to avail to configure and bring up the CRM system. They will include all the costs like project scoping costs, software configuration, training and hardware costs. They also include the internal costs like the salaries paid to the staff and the prices charged by the software vendor.

3. Support Cost

Support costs will include the cost of maintaining the system. Processes like technical support, customer support, administrator support, etc come under the support costs.

CRM Software Pricing

Assessing the software license costs is simple. The prices will be based on licenses for single user or multiple users. You have to keep room for expansion by buying extra software licenses. You will feel the need of extra licenses as the users using the system will grow as you start realizing its benefits. The extra licenses will also serve useful for the new staff.

While buying the CRM software, you might have to choose between concurrent and named licenses. Most of the businesses opt for concurrent. Some of the software vendors supply the licenses in batch quantities only like 5, 10, 15, etc.

The maintenance costs come into picture when you want to get the software updated, altered or modified from the software vendor or you want to get its performance improved or its adaptation to a new work environment. The charges for this are usually not covered in the software cost. You might have to pay a fixed annual fee for maintenance. Sometimes the maintenance fees are compulsory; you cannot buy a license without the maintenance. Do not go for CRM software without availing the maintenance.

As you saw above, CRM pricing is a fundamental concern during the implementation of CRM into your business. So study a bit and then go for it.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 22nd, 2010 at 11:23 pm and is filed under Management Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.