Why two quotes for the same thing differ so much
ERP quotes in Nepal are hard to compare because vendors draw the boundary in different places. One quote covers licence only. Another includes migration and training. A third assumes your team does the data preparation. None of them are wrong, but they are not the same purchase.
Before comparing numbers, write down the scope yourself — which departments, which data, which integrations, and who does the work — and ask every vendor to price that same scope.
The five cost lines that matter
Across implementations, these are the lines that determine what a project actually costs. Only the first is usually quoted prominently.
- Licence or subscription — per user, per module, or per organisation, and what happens as you grow
- Data migration — the single most under-estimated line, and the one most dependent on the state of your existing records
- Configuration — approval limits, roles, document formats, tax handling and reporting shaped to how you actually work
- Training — including the people who join after go-live, which is rarely budgeted
- Integration — connecting existing tools, and whether that is a one-off or ongoing cost
The cost nobody quotes: your own team's time
The largest hidden cost in most ERP projects is internal. Someone in finance has to clean the ledger before it migrates. Someone in HR has to verify the employee master. Managers have to run old and new processes in parallel for a period.
This time is real and it is usually taken from people who already have full jobs. Estimating it honestly is the difference between a project that lands and one that stalls halfway.
Cheaper quotes usually move cost rather than removing it
A lower quote typically means one of a few things: less migration included, configuration billed later, training limited to a handful of sessions, or support at a slower tier. None of these are unreasonable — but they should be a decision you make, not a surprise you discover in month three.
Ask each vendor directly which of these five lines their quote excludes. A vendor who answers plainly is easier to work with later than one whose number is simply lower.
How to compare fairly
Put every quote on a total first-year basis, then add an honest estimate of your own team's time. Then ask what year two looks like once implementation is done and only licence and support remain.
That second number matters more than it seems, because ERP is a system you keep. A project that is cheap to start and expensive to run is the more costly choice over any realistic horizon.
