Was reading a magazine on Customer Management Solutions while on the plane to the Isle
of Man yesterday and came across a snippet about what the typical cost structure
of a CRM project
tends to be. Interesting enough for me to want to conserve it for posterity, and what
better place than my blog! Here’s the snippet:
As a rough guide, the typical TCO of a CRM
system is as follows:
- Software licences – 16%
- Maintenance – 6%
- Hardware – 7%
- Telecoms – 5%
- System integration – 27%
- Professional services – 4%
- Internal staff costs – 16%
It’s interesting to note that internal staff costs are usually equivalent
to the software licenses for the CRM solution. Most CRM projects tend to neglect staff
costs when costing the project; particularly as they tend to require so much change
to the business processes around it. It’s interesting to have these figures available,
as a few years ago, when CRM was still relatively new, it was very hard to quantify
what the cost pattern looked like. Today, the costing side is easy, the difficult
part is making a solid ROI case for the project, as measuring the benefit of improving
your customer relationship can only be measured by indirect information, example improved
sales targets, new market offerings, etc