The licence is not the cost of the system

Buyers argue about per-seat price because it is the number the vendor puts in the email. It is also the number that is easiest to compare in a spreadsheet and the number that is least like the bill you will pay.

Once you add implementation, integration, data work, training and administration, the licence stops being the biggest line on a CRM-shaped project. Heavier platforms carry more of that weight than lighter ones, and lighter ones climb as you cross tiers. The point is not a ratio you can borrow. It is that the proposal prices one line and the project pays for all of them.

• Licences28% of year-one spend
• Implementation & integration45% of year-one spend
• Internal time & admin27% of year-one spend

A planning model for a CRM-shaped project, not a benchmark and not your invoice. The proportions are there to show that the licence line is the small one. Your own three-year numbers come from quotes, not from this.

If 55% of CRM projects miss their planned objectives (Johnny Grow, 2025), a large part of that miss is here: the organisation budgeted for seats, then discovered the partner, the data, and the change management were the actual product.

Buy, configure, or build

These are not ideologies. They are cost shapes.

Buy when the job is a known category (CRM, accounting, helpdesk) and three vendors already compete on it. You want their roadmap, their security questionnaire, and the option to leave. You will pay rent forever. That is the deal.

Configure when the category is right and your process is 80% standard. The remaining 20% is fields, workflows, and discipline rather than a custom platform. Most “we need it custom” requests in a 50-person company are this, plus a fear of looking unstructured.

Build when the workflow is the business, no vendor owns the job, and you are prepared to own the thing after the agency leaves: hosting, auth, the next change request, the person who understands it. Building a second CRM because you did not like the first one’s demo is how companies collect systems.

How it usually goes

1. 01A gap in the current tool becomes a ‘platform’
2. 02A developer quotes screens, not operations
3. 03No owner named for year two
4. 04The licence you were fleeing is still running, plus a new bill

How it should go

1. 01Name the job that no bought system can do
2. 02Price 3 years of run cost, not 3 months of build
3. 03Buy the commodity around it (auth, email, CRM of record)
4. 04Only then write the piece that is actually yours

Implementation is a second vendor

For Salesforce, Dynamics, SAP, and similar, the delivery partner is a buying decision. Public “implementation packages” are rare; SI ranges for the same logo can differ enormously depending on who you hire in Dubai versus who you hire from a global bench.

So: get the implementation number in the same round as the licence. Ask what happens when the partner’s project team demobilises. If the answer is “your admin,” make sure that admin exists as a role, not as optimism.

• Missed the planned objective55%
• Achieved the planned objective45%

Johnny Grow, The CRM Software Failure Rate is 55% (2025). Failure is defined there as deployments that did not achieve their planned objectives.

A simple test

Write the job on one line. Then:

• If three serious vendors already sell that job, buy.
• If one of those vendors can do it with configuration you can maintain, configure.
• If none of them can, and you would still need the thing if every vendor vanished, build the smallest version, next to a bought system of record rather than instead of one.

Re-run the test when someone says “the CRM doesn’t do X.” Often X is training, or a report, or a WhatsApp pipe, not a new product.

What to do this week

• Take your last software proposal and add three lines: partner implementation, internal time (hours × real loaded cost), ongoing admin. If you cannot fill them, you do not have a cost. You have a seat price.
• For any “we should build it” idea, write the three-year run cost before the build estimate.
• If you are mid-stack and unhappy, separate wrong product from wrong implementation. They are different branches: switch vs fix vs rebuild.

The tech check has all three doors (find/switch, optimise, build) because they are not the same project. Picking the door on purpose is most of the work.

Where this goes next

Total cost decides build versus buy. Which system you are costing in the first place is a separate question, settled by four questions that get a CRM shortlist down to three. The wider decision process sits in how to buy enterprise software without regretting it.

Pricing the whole three-year picture rather than the licence line is part of CRM selection and implementation.

Sources

• Johnny Grow, CRM failure report (2025): 55% / 25%
• Johnny Grow, The CRM Software Failure Rate is 55% (2025)
• Cost proportions in this piece are a planning model, not sourced ranges. Treat them as a shape to test your own quotes against.