STAEDEAN Rental Management for Dynamics 365: Cost, Pricing Factors, and Payment Models

When you’re looking for a solution to manage the rental of your equipment or manufactured products, one of the parameters you’ll surely be gauging all the solutions against would be the price of the rental management software.

The investment you put into the rental software is crucial as it is the starting point to evaluate your TCO, ROI, and justify the investment to your stakeholders.

However, the cost of the solution depends on the type of solution you want — best-of-breed, embedded software package, customized, local rental solution, and so on.

With deep global expertise in the rental industry for over 17 years, we at STAEDEAN know how essential investment in technology is for a business. Money put into the right technology is the foundation of a sustainable and exponentially growing rental business.

This article will discuss the cost you can expect for the rental software we offer STAEDEAN Rental Management — an end-to-end, cloud-based solution, embedded in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain Management.

Let’s begin with breaking down the investment in STAEDEAN Rental Management into three components:

1. Software licensing cost
2. Software implementation cost
3. Software support cost

We’ll cover each component, explore the factors influencing the price and the payment models you can expect.

1. STAEDEAN Rental Management software licensing cost

In this section, we’ll be discussing the investment in the license for STAEDEAN Rental Management and the platform it leverages — Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain Management (F&SCM).

Standard Microsoft D365 F&SCM license cost

To use the rental software, you would first need to purchase the license of the ERP in which the software is embedded. In this case, to use STAEDEAN Rental Management, you will need the license for Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Supply Chain Management.

The minimum number of licenses for Dynamics 365 is 20 users. These 20 Finance and Supply Chain Management Base user licenses (full users) are mandatory, and you can purchase them from Microsoft or other ISVs providing the Microsoft F&SCM license.

The fee here covers the user license and includes the payment for azure consumption and the software tenant.

The pricing model is per user, per month, which remains constant, irrespective of the volume of users.

You can explore more about Microsoft's license pricing for the Dynamics 365 Finance license and Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management license.

STAEDEAN Rental Management license cost and pricing factors

STAEDEAN Rental Management is a SaaS, cloud-based rental management software embedded in Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management. It’s designed to meet the needs of equipment rental companies and manufacturers that rent out.

The STAEDEAN Rental Management license structure is a 1:1 ratio with the Dynamics 365 licenses. For the first 20 users, the price will be $20,000 to $30,000 annually. For additional users the price varies depending on the user type:

• Finance and/or Supply Chain Management base users (full users),
• Operations activity users,
• Team member users, or
• Device users

After the first 50 users, a discounted tiered pricing structure is applicable.

To understand more about how the licensing structure works for each user type, read our. article on the cost of an equipment rental solution.

The payment model of STAEDEAN Rental Management license

The payment process for STAEDEAN Rental Management is at least a one-year upfront payment and subsequent annual payments over a three-year contractual period with a fixed price of subscription. The STAEDEAN Rental Management subscription fee is inclusive of three components:

• The right to use the software – Customers can use the software if they’ve paid for the subscription.
• Software updates – Software updates are made available during the contract period. STAEDEAN provides several updates per year, so customers can deploy them if they wish (which is advisable, considering customers must stay current on their releases).
• The standard support – This standard support package provides our customers with easy access to support portals and helps them navigate through our internal knowledge hub containing articles and documents with a single point of contact.

Lastly, for STAEDEAN Rental Management, there is no additional cost for Azure consumption as it is completely embedded into the Dynamics 365 environment.

2. Software implementation cost

Also known as implementation services, it’s configuring the software solution and importing data so that your organization can adopt the software solution (in this case, STAEDEAN Rental Management) to support your business. Traditionally we (and most of our partners) follow a well-defined methodology with several phases — Diagnostic, Analysis, Design, Development, Deployment, and Operation.

The investment in the STAEDEAN Rental Management implementation is typically given after a high-level fit-gap analysis performed after the diagnostic phase.

The implementation price could begin at a rough estimate of $500,000 for 300 days. However, please note that various factors could influence the price, which we will discuss further. It’s always advisable to get in touch with our sales specialist to understand the pricing applicable, based on the defined scope.

What factors influence the implementation cost of STAEDEAN Rental Management?

Implementing the software is the most critical yet comprehensive stage and demands the most sizable portion of your investment. The price is determined by the customer's requirements and depends on several factors:

Your existing ERP system: It depends on whether you have already implemented Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain Management (or are in progress) as this would influence the price. If the ERP is already in place, you should realize that STAEDEAN Rental Management relies on and is embedded with several cross-functional areas of F&SCM, such as procurement, inventory, logistics, sales, and finance, requiring cross-functional alignment.

Size of the solution: The number of solutions you plan to implement will increase the overall effort, thereby impacting cost. For instance, if, besides STAEDEAN Rental Management, you choose to implement optional add-on solutions such as STAEDEAN Rental Mobile Operations (Field Service), STAEDEAN Rental Customer Portal, or STAEDEAN Rental Logistics Scanning.

Business Complexity: The complexity of your business processes and operations that need support must first be measured. It should be clear which business processes, such as equipment or business object management, rental agreements, rental invoicing, service, maintenance, and so on, must be covered by the standard Dynamics 365 F&SCM solution — as this impacts the final cost.

Project size: The size of your project, which depends on the number of users, number of legal entities, number of sites, number of countries, and so on, will impact your investment. You can manage and control this by defining a single business template (configuration) to be rolled out (or deployed) to several entities.

Additional solutions: Implementation of the software solution may also require an investment if needed in:

• Integration with other third-party systems,
• Migration of existing master and/or transactional data, and
• Additional BI & reporting needs.

We at STAEDEAN offer Business Integration Solutions (BIS) and Analytics for Rental to support the mentioned processes.

Internal alignment: The extent of internal alignment impacts the cost, such as:

• Setting and agreeing on deliverables among your team members,
• Identifying activities to be performed by your implementation partner and your personnel, and
• The speed of your leadership’s decision-making.

Once all these variables are clear, it would be possible to provide a more reliable number regarding the required level of investment for the configuration of the standard STAEDEAN Rental Management solution.

3. Software support cost

What is the STAEDEAN Rental Management software support?

The support process usually begins after the customer's system goes live, and the support investment would include all the costs associated after the operational stage.

We offer different support plans for STAEDEAN Rental Management, which you could choose to take, as it eases the end-to-end digital transformation of your rental operations.

The STAEDEAN Rental Management support costs could be toward multiple parties involved. There could be internal teams (in-house technical support), a third party (if some external agency is involved in technical support), and then the ISV, which in this case is us (STAEDEAN).

There could be different lines of support that a company would require depending on its needs. However, if a customer does not have the technical skills or experience for internal support or a support partner in place, and prefers to outsource their software support completely, then we could be a step closer to providing support. In such cases, you could reach out to us for a second or even a first line of support.

What is the cost of STAEDEAN Rental Management software support?

On average, the price for STAEDEAN Rental Management support could range from $12,000 to $65,000 annually, which varies per business. Companies with a strong internal functional and technical staff with the skills to support an end-to-end solution could opt for a product support package, starting at $5,500 for the essential plan and about $11,000 for the premium plan.

However, the price of support depends on the level of support that a customer would need, which is based on several factors, some of which include:

• The line of support required — the first, second, or third line of support
• The type of support package chosen — product support package that is ticket-based, or solution support package that is customizable, hour-based, and offers more extensive support
• The software licensing investment, determining project complexity
• The number of software users, as it indicates the volume of the project and solution
• The time to implement the software, as a longer implementation time would mean more support
• Strength and technical skills of the in-house IT team
• The type of support partners or organizations involved

The payment model of STAEDEAN Rental Management software support

Product support package: An annual fee is to be paid toward software support. This fee could differ depending on the product support plan selected — Essential or Premium.

The advantage under the care of our standard support plans is that a ticket is only charged per incident reported, with a guaranteed response time.

Solution support package: An annual payment of a fixed fee linked to the software support contract on a time and material (T&M) basis is to be paid. The timebank hours are invoiced yearly by default, but this can optionally be invoiced quarterly for larger amounts.  

A benefit of this support plan is that customers can adjust the support time bank (number of support hours needed annually) along the way, even after software implementation.

Is STAEDEAN Rental Management the right software to invest in for your business?

Now that you've understood the cost of our rental software and have got an overview of the pricing factors and payment processes, you will be able to decide whether it is the right investment decision.

You can read another article to explore more about how to calculate the ROI on rental software.

If a single software solving all your financial, operational, and personnel challenges is a concept that syncs with your organization’s growth strategy, STAEDEAN Rental Management might be just what you’re looking for.

Please note that the STAEDEAN Rental Management solution investment depends on a myriad of factors. We'd love to offer you more clarity on the investment after understanding what you're looking to solve in your rental business.