Run the Number
Twelve technology choices, each with a number that decides it. The trap is that the number on the slide is almost always the one at the front — and what it costs to run arrives after the decision.
1. Two document management platforms. Licences differ by £40k a year; implementation differs by £30k one-off. Both are five-year terms.
2. Build a bespoke customer portal or configure the vendor's. Build is £400k; configure is £260k. The build needs two engineers to keep it alive afterwards.
3. Two payroll providers, near-identical pricing. One holds your data in its own schema and charges for extraction; the other exports to open formats on demand.
4. Two integration platforms. One is quoted as a fixed annual fee; the other is priced per transaction, and nobody has volumes.
5. Migrate the data warehouse to a managed cloud service or refresh the on-premise hardware. Cloud has no capital cost; the refresh is £600k every five years.
6. A niche vendor at half the price of the incumbent. They have eleven staff and two of your competitors as customers.
7. Two CRM options. One is quoted per named user; the other per concurrent session. Your headcount is 400 and nobody knows peak concurrency.
8. Replace a stable in-house tool that costs £20k a year to run with a SaaS product at £18k a year plus a £250k migration.
9. Two data platforms, same licence cost. One needs a skill your team does not have and the market pays a premium for.
10. A three-year deal with a 40% discount against a one-year rolling contract at list price, for a capability your strategy may drop in eighteen months.
11. Two ERP implementation partners, £2.1m and £2.6m. The cheaper one assumes your team supplies six full-time subject matter experts; the other assumes two.
12. Build a reporting layer in-house or buy a BI tool. The build is £90k and reuses a platform you already run and staff; the tool is £75k plus £40k a year.
Educational. Pricing models and accounting treatments vary; what transfers is asking what a decision costs in year three and who pays it, and refusing a comparison between two estimates that are not for the same thing.