For many businesses, particularly smaller ones, the cost of Dynamics seems prohibitive.
People often ask us, “Why is licencing so expensive for CRM systems?“
Now, you might not worry about cost if you are looking at some of the free systems or the ones that cost $10-20 per user, per month, but they also come with restricted functionality. That might be perfect for you, depending on what you want out of your system. Some of these basic systems with the cloud-based CRM can get you up and running at around $20 per user, per month, which might seem like a good start.
However, you might want a better system for the future of your business—one that allows more functionality and integrates with your other systems. You want to have confidence in your system and ensure that it grows with your business, so that you can avoid the painful process of switching systems unnecessarily. This is similar to when your business needs to move premises from one location to another if you no longer have capacity for more staff. Systems are just the same.
So, when we talk about the cost of licencing, what do we really mean? If you look at Microsoft Dynamics 365, for example, the sales licence is about £50 per user, per month [2024]
Now, let’s break that down. That gets you access to the full sales pipeline functionality with
- leads
- opportunities
- contacts
- accounts
- activity management
- quotes
- orders
- invoices
All of a sudden, you are not just looking at a small piece of functionality; you are looking at a significant system that could run your entire business’ sales pipeline.
If you look at £50 per user, per month, and you are serious about making your business more efficient, well, that’s under £2 a day. It is minimal. £50 per month, per user is actually only a couple of hours of someone’s time. When you look at the time saved in reporting, no longer having to deal with multiple systems or duplicate data across different databases, because you have it in all one place. Suddenly, £50 per user, per month actually starts to save you money.
When you look at the time spent duplicating data into multiple systems, or even the need to open several systems to answer a simple query, it racks up very fast if you do that 20-30 times a day for customers.
So, why is licencing so expensive? When you look at it in isolation, you may think it is. When you actually factor in the many components of a successful, efficient business, it really isn’t that much of a big investment.