Methodology
The arithmetic behind the ERP cost range
Six answers become one effort weight, a seventh scales the migration line on its own, and out of them come four lines. This page prints every weight in the model, so the range stops being a number that simply appears.
There is no currency anywhere in this model. The licence line is literally the number 1, and every other line is a multiple of the licence figure you type in yourself. Publishing this page publishes our complexity multipliers — not our prices, and not anybody else's.
The unit
There is no money in this model
The estimator has one anchor and it is not ours. A software licence is the only cost in an ERP programme with a real number attached to it before any work starts, because it is the one figure a vendor will put in writing in a single email. So the model takes that figure as its unit: the licence line is 1, and implementation, migration and support are each expressed as a multiple of it.
Which is why the page opens in multiples rather than dirhams. Leave the licence field empty and the result stays a multiple — a range like “four to seven times your annual licence”. Type in the figure from your own vendor's quote and every line is that figure multiplied. We will not print a licence price, because any price we printed would be one we invented.
The consequence is that this page gives nothing away that a buyer should not have. There is no market survey in the model, no record of what anyone paid, and no price of ours anywhere in it. What it publishes is our view of what makes one implementation heavier than another — which is the part you are entitled to argue with.
One last mechanical detail. Once a licence figure is supplied, every money figure on the screen is rounded outward before it is shown: to the nearest 5,000 below 100,000, to the nearest 10,000 from 100,000 up to 500,000, and to the nearest 25,000 at 500,000 and above. The low end rounds down and the high end rounds up, so the printed range is never narrower than the computed one. The multiples themselves are printed to one decimal place.
The weight
One weight, seven terms
Two of the four lines are scaled by a single effort weight. It starts at 1 and six of your seven answers add to it. Nothing subtracts, and nothing multiplies.
The effort weight, written out in full
- 1 — the baseline
- + the user band
- + 0.2 × (legal entities − 1)
- + the industry factor
- + 0.12 × (modules beyond the first three)
- + 0.15 if Arabic or bilingual
- + 0.2 if e-invoicing is in scope
- = the effort weight shown beside your result
How many people will use it
| Answer | Added to the weight |
|---|---|
| 1–10 users | 0 |
| 11–25 users | 0.1 |
| 26–50 users | 0.25 |
| 51–100 users | 0.45 |
| More than 100 | 0.7 |
What business you are in
| Answer | Added to the weight |
|---|---|
| Construction | 0.3 |
| Manufacturing | 0.3 |
| Trading & distribution | 0.15 |
| Real estate | 0.2 |
| Professional services | 0.05 |
| Other | 0.1 |
What has to come across from the old system
| Answer | Migration weight |
|---|---|
| Opening balances only | 0.1 |
| Masters and open items | 0.3 |
| Full history from one system | 0.6 |
| Full history from several systems | 1 |
The lines
Four lines, all in multiples of a licence
The weight above scales two of them. The migration line is scaled by its own weight, and the licence line is not scaled at all.
| Line | Low | High |
|---|---|---|
| Software licence (one year) | 1 | 1 |
| Implementation | weight × 1.4 | weight × 2.4 |
| Data migration | migration weight × 0.25 | migration weight × 0.7 |
| First-year support | weight × 0.15 | weight × 0.28 |
| Year one, all in | the four lines above, added | the four lines above, added |
What is still being paid in year two
- lowest = 1 + weight × 0.15
- highest = 1 + weight × 0.28
- The licence renews and the support contract renews. The implementation and the migration do not, so they are not in this line.
Bounds
Where the model stops
Seven things it does not do. Each one is a place where a real figure would be higher, lower, or simply different.
- It adds; it never multiplies. Every driver is a term added to a baseline of 1, so a company that is heavy on four counts at once is weighted as the sum of the four and not as their compound. Real programmes do compound.
- The entity term stops at five. The last option is “5 or more” and it is counted as exactly five, so a group of twelve companies is weighted as a group of five.
- The user band stops at “more than 100”. A system for 120 people and a system for 1,200 carry the same 0.7.
- Every module past the third adds the same 0.12, whichever module it is. Payroll and point of sale weigh the same here. In a real scope they do not.
- Migration is scaled by the scope you chose and by nothing else. It is the one line the effort weight does not touch, and the model never asks what condition the old data is in — which is the single largest reason a migration takes twice as long as it was planned to.
- Nothing in the weight varies with integrations to other systems, with hardware, or with the hours your own people will spend on the project. The seven terms above are the whole of it.
- It says nothing about whether the programme succeeds. Most of what goes wrong is not in the price — it is in whether the business changed how it works.
ERP Cost Estimator
Argue with a weight, not with the range
Every weight in the model is on this page so that it can be disputed. Tell us which one is wrong for your business and we will tell you what we would put in its place.
Monday to Friday, 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM (GST)
Prefer we call you?
Leave your WhatsApp number and we will reach out.