What an ERP rollout actually costs
The licence is the smallest line item. Where the real budget goes — and how to keep a rollout from becoming a black hole.
Ask five vendors what an ERP costs and you'll get five incompatible numbers — because the licence or build is the smallest line item. The real cost lives in three places most quotes don't mention.
First: your own people's time. A rollout is a part-time job for your operations lead, your finance head, and every department champion. Budget it or it shows up as burnout.
Second: data. Migrating ten years of spreadsheets into a clean model is unglamorous, unskippable work. Projects that budget migration properly launch on time; projects that treat it as an afterthought launch with garbage data and lose trust on day one.
Third: the month after go-live. The system meets reality and reality pushes back. Vendors who vanish at launch leave you with a half-adopted system; the support budget is what turns go-live into adoption.
Our rule of thumb: whatever the build costs, hold back 20–30% for migration, training, and the first quarter of support. It's the cheapest insurance in the entire budget.