What is the Cost of a Dynamics 365 BPM Solution?

If you’re looking for a Business Process Management (BPM) solution for your organization, its cost would be one of the first few things you want to learn about. Evaluating the price of a BPM can be difficult because the various functions it offers could mean different things to different companies. However, we will try to break it down and shed some light on how a Dynamics 365 BPM solution is priced in this blog.

On average, a BPM solution will cost you anything between $20 and $450 per month, per user.
Typically, a BPM software is priced per user and it could go up or down depending on your organization’s unique requirements and the type of solution you choose (on-premises or cloud-based). The purchasing process can be complex at times due to a huge gap between the cost of software and service offerings.

For instance, a traditional BPM software is more expensive than a cloud-based model due to the overall additional costs it includes. However, some businesses have extreme security requirements and a cloud-based solution may not be desired. In such instances, the high costs of a traditional BPM solution are justified.

At STAEDEAN, we’ve been helping companies reinvent and optimize their business processes in Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP with our RapidValue BPM Suite. We understand the common concerns with evaluating and preparing a budget to choose and buy the right BPM solution for your business. Therefore, in this blog, we will not only provide our BPM solution cost details as an example but will cover the key factors that impact the cost of a BPM solution to help any BPM buyer understand pricing.

A value-driven BPM tool can help you can achieve a strategic ERP implementation that enables people, processes, and technology to align with the company’s business goals. Further, it helps improve your business processes and leverage your ERP system to optimize workflows. A BPM tool brings in established industry best practices and processes making your ERP implementation more streamlined.

BPM helps create higher customer value

Some common factors that influence the cost of a BPM solution are:

• Software platform (cloud-based or on-premises)
• Services, support, and maintenance
• Business size and industry of operation
• The complexity of business processes and outcomes

Software

Cloud-based 

With the cloud-based option, your initial setup cost is less as the vendor manages the installation and maintenance of servers and architecture. You get the flexible, pay-as-you-go subscription model, which means you can choose the features that support your business needs and pay only for them.

Services, support, and maintenance

This is the IT help desk to assist you with your queries on using the software and when you encounter issues with it. You might also want to check if the vendor is charging you separately for email and phone support. Again, the support and maintenance cost varies for both on-premises and SaaS BPM solutions.

On-premises:                                                                                                                                                                                        You will need continued maintenance to ensure your software is always up to date and compatible with other software. Maintenance releases help with that and address any problem with the software.

As the implementation of a cloud-based BPM is standardized and consistent, the support team typically manages most of the maintenance work. The need for your IT staff’s involvement reduces considerably. Without any setup or software/server cost, this option is usually more scalable and flexible.

Business size

The cost of a BPM software for a company with 2000+ users will be far more than that with about 1000 users. This is as simple as that. The higher the number of users, the more expensive the BPM solution.

So, based on the user count, a BPM vendor will charge you for the computational resources and training of your staff.

The complexity of processes and outcomes

The complexity of your workflows affects the price of a BPM solution. The more complex your processes and workflows are, the more expensive your BPM solution becomes. Some solutions will require coding your processes. Likewise, you will need as much coding as the complexity level of your processes.

For instance, a supply company receiving goods from 2 warehouses and supplying to 5 customers has a less complex process than a company interacting with 15 suppliers and 30 retailers.

When it comes to pricing specifically, one needs to consider all of the above factors, which is also why single standard pricing might not work for all.

What is an example of BPM pricing?

Let’s take a look at a few examples of BPM pricing based on various factors. This will give you a basic idea of how much you would have to pay for different requirements.

Some examples of BPM pricing under different scenarios:

The pricing details above are not inclusive of any initial set-up or support/maintenance cost.

So, depending on the status of your ERP systems, you may have to pay an upfront installation fee. Plus, some vendors include the support/maintenance/services charges within the license cost while others need you to pay an additional fee.

Each BPM software provider has its unique pricing models. To give you a more realistic example, we will now share how our STAEDEAN RapidValue BPM Suite is priced. Let’s begin with understanding the RapidValue BPM software and its offerings to relate to its overall pricing.

What is STAEDEAN’s RapidValue BPM Suite?

RapidValue is a value-driven BPM tool built inside Microsoft Dynamics 365 F&SCM to aid digital transformation in your organization. It enables successful ERP deployments and helps align business roles, processes, flows, and technologies with your customer’s business goals. The solution further allows you to simplify processes, automate key business operations, and enhance overall productivity to yield the best outcomes.

The pricing model for RapidValue BPM Suite

RapidValue BPM Suite follows a simple license-based subscription pricing model, which means you pay per user, per month based on the package you subscribe for.

The solution offers two packages to opt from based on the level of access, as follows:

1. Viewer

As the name suggests, this package offers view-only access and is priced at €5.00 per user, per month. It is easily accessible to every user. However, they can only view all the data created in RV and cannot make any modifications. Therefore, it is best for those users who do not play a role in maneuvering your process plans. Except for device users, it can match with every single user type in your Dynamics 365 F&O environment. Due to its basic permission level and a fairly simple price, the Viewer package is suitable for most users in an organization.

2. Editor

The Editor package is basically an editor license, best suited for the roles that are actively involved in creating and editing processes in your organization. Enabling the users to design your processes or implementation methodologies, this package is priced at €100 per user, per month. It allows the user to access and control all the RapidValue BPM functionalities.
RapidValue’s Editor package is independent of and not connected to any user type in Dynamics 365 F&O. It has a minimum order quantity of seven. Calculating the cost of our RapidValue BPM Suite is as simple as putting together the number of Viewer and Editor licenses you need for your organization. Here are two examples to show you how:

RapidValue BPM Suite pricing examples

Subscription requirements

The RapidValue BPM software licenses require a minimum of a one-year subscription. The Editor license has a minimum purchase requirement of seven, while there is no minimum requirement of licenses to be purchased for the Viewer package.

Discounts

One of the common BPM cost questions we get asked is about discounts. Yes, we offer special discounts for multi-year upfront payments.

Selecting the right BPM solution for your business

A BPM is an all-inclusive methodology that aims to achieve optimized business outcomes driven by result-oriented objectives.
A BPM solution typically includes automation and streamlining of processes, besides facilitating change by making it easier for people to get things done the way they want. In addition, it also gives you visibility and an overview of how everything is working in the organization.

A common mistake when purchasing a BPM solution is that you could forget to assess your organization’s true BPM needs. Without evaluating what you need a BPM solution exactly for, you run the risk of overbuying or underbuying.

Here are a few questions to get you off to a good start in figuring out which of your business challenges can a BPM help with:

• How would you rate the complexity of your business processes?
• List out the goals of your workflow/business processes.
• Are you looking for a customized BPM system or a user-friendly……
• What is the size of your team?
• How much customization will you need in your BPM software?