I've never seen a CRM decision made solely on price, that is, that product X is chosen over product Y solely because product X is cheaper. On more than one occasion I have seen a particular tool selected even though it's slightly more expensive than the initial target budget because it has particular strong functionality that is thought to justify the additional expense. But it's rare that a tool is selected despite being considerably more expensive than the budget allows. You need to define a budget for the tool purchase and implementation as part of the requirements definition so you don't waste your time evaluating candidate tools that you can't afford. When creating the budget, be sure to consider all the costs, including:
One last note about the budget. Some CRM projects end up costing considerably more than either the initial target budget or the approved budget. Although an increase between the initial target and the approved budget can be justified by higher business achievements afforded through better functionality, large overspending during the implementation is always a bad thing. The goal of this book is to give you practical tools to create reasonable budgets in the first place, and to keep to them throughout the implementation cycle. |