What drives ERP cost: the items behind the quote

Example scenario: picture a textile firm in Denizli that makes towels and bathrobes. When it starts researching ERP, it would end up holding quotes that look nothing alike. One states an annual subscription, another a perpetual licence, a third a monthly fee per user. One includes data migration, another lists it separately. These quotes can only be compared once they are laid out in the same table. You can see what ERP covers in what ERP is.

The row most often overlooked is data migration. At the textile firm, customer cards might sit in the accounting program, stock cards in an Excel file, and recipes in the production manager's notebook. Cleaning and merging these sources is work that has nothing to do with the software, and when the quote leaves it out, it turns up as separate work during the project.

A perpetual licence is bought once, and a separate maintenance contract usually covers updates and support. With a subscription the software is rented, and updates are often included in the fee. The right choice depends on the company: a firm with tight cash flow may prefer a subscription, while one that knows it will stay on the same system for a long time may prefer a perpetual licence.

With per-user pricing, the point to watch is who counts as a user. If a manager who only reads reports, a field worker who only files leave requests, or a partner who logs in now and then also counts as a full user, the fee grows faster than expected. The quote should list user types separately.

On your own server the software fee sometimes looks lower, because hosting is left out of the quote. But the server itself, the backup routine, operating system updates, restore tests, and the person who does all of this go into the company's budget. In the cloud these items are included in the service fee; in return, the data sits on the provider's infrastructure.

The decision is not made on cost alone. Where the data will sit, KVKK (Turkish data protection) obligations, and the company's own IT capacity also come into it. The setup on your own server page shows the options for businesses that want their data to stay in-house.

In Turkey, electronic documents are an inseparable part of an ERP project. The scope and technical guides for schemes such as e-invoice, e-archive, and e-dispatch note are published on the Revenue Administration's e-Document site. Confirm with your accountant which schemes are mandatory for your company; the ERP quote should also state how these documents will be issued (through a private integrator or a direct connection) and what that costs.

If the Denizli textile firm also sells abroad, export documents, foreign currency, and a bank connection come up alongside e-invoice and e-archive. For each connection, the quote should say who will set it up, who will fix it when it breaks, and whether it carries an annual fee.

An ERP project also takes effort from inside the company. The person who explains the processes, the person who cleans the data, and the team who attend training all set aside part of their work during that time. If the old system runs alongside the new one for a while, the same record is entered in two places. None of this appears on an invoice, but it is part of the real cost of the project.

Customisation is the second source. If the software is changed for every process that does not fit the standard screens, the first setup gets more expensive and every later upgrade gets harder. Before asking for customisation, it is worth checking whether the process itself could change.

The third source is the cost of leaving. At the quote stage, ask in what format the data will be handed over when the contract ends, whether exporting carries a separate fee, and whether read-only access to old records continues. The answers settle today what it will cost to change systems one day.

The CRM counterpart of the same item-by-item logic, with user and channel scope, is covered in what drives CRM cost.

Corex360 is a platform that brings CRM, ERP, and automation together on a business intelligence core. Its modules are not separate products; they share the same customer record, and information is entered once. That is why some of the integration rows in the table close inside the company, on the same core: sales and purchase invoices are issued in the Accounting module, on the same core as the customer card.

Existing customer and contact records are moved across together at setup, with the scope agreed in the demo. You can put the questions in the table to Corex360 too; the answers go into the written quote.