The real cost of Microsoft Dynamics 365/CRM: Make smart estimates

Whether you are a startup or an established company, there comes a moment when you decide to invest in modern CRM software like Microsoft Dynamics 365. Be careful, as this decision will contribute to your company's performance for the next 5 to 10 years. So let's look at a few factors that have a big impact. I like to call these factors the 3 P's: Price, People, and Partner. For the purposes of this article, we will assume the software buyer is a small or mid-sized enterprise (SME) with 30 CRM users.

Budget

Let's start with the most obvious factor: your available budget. For managers, money is usually the biggest deal breaker. Dynamics 365 comes with a price tag that consists of three typical components: the cost of licenses, a budget to set up the software, and a budget for change management.

The licenses

The cost of a license is publicly available on the Dynamics 365 website. The license you need for your users depends on the applications you want to use and the features that are interesting for your company. So let's say you want the basic features to support your sales staff (5 users), your customer service department (5 users) and your active customer-facing projects (5 users). This will require that all fifteen users get at least the "Customer Engagement Plan", which comes at a price of $115 dollar per user per month.

But maybe not every user needs all these crazy features (including entire apps ...