Insight
The licence is the cheapest part
A business with no IT staff pays most of the cost of software in time, and almost none of it appears on the invoice.
1 min read
What the invoice covers
The subscription is visible, predictable and easy to compare between vendors, which is why it dominates buying decisions. It is rarely the largest number.
What it does not cover
| Cost | Falls on | When |
|---|---|---|
| Initial data entry | Existing staff, usually after hours | Before go-live |
| The physical stock count at cutover | Everyone | One weekend, and it is longer than expected |
| Learning time | Every user, at reduced output | First few weeks |
| The internal owner's ongoing time | One person, permanently | Every week thereafter |
| Process change in receiving or closing | Specific individuals | Permanently |
| Hardware, printers, connectivity | Capital | Once, then replacement |
None of these appear on a quotation, and for a small business the middle rows are frequently larger than the licence over the first year.
What accessible actually means
Affordable pricing is the easy half. The harder half is that a business with no IT staff must be able to set the thing up, run it and recover from a mistake without calling anyone.
That constraint rules out a lot of otherwise capable software. A system needing a consultant to add a user or change a tax rate is not accessible at any licence price, and the ongoing dependency is a cost that never ends.
Ask for the year-three number
Not year one. Year three, with the users you will have added, the modules you will have needed, and the support arrangement you will realistically be on.
A vendor who cannot answer that has either not thought about it or would rather you did not.
Questions about anything here, or a situation this does not cover? contact@anantatechhub.com