How much to spend or how much you can afford to spend is tricky stuff. Spend too little and you get an unsatisfactory solution. Spend too much and the ROI is too long.

This is a budgeting exercise - sort out available funds and stack them opposite your expected expenditures. This quickly becomes a big task and one that you are hopefully doing anyway. It is surely beyond the scope of this report. But we can help – we’ll address how much you can expect the CMS to cost.

The first model takes a “sort it out along the way” approach. Do a preliminary Request For Information (RFI) and collect initial budgetary quotes. This works pretty well. Details matter and they certainly affect pricing. Vendors are aware that RFI’s are exploratory. They do not offer best pricing at this stage.


An alternative approach is to select a target budget range and ask the vendors to meet it. You’ll be surprised how flexible some vendors can be when you are clear about your needs. “Yes we initially said it would be $85,000 but with some work and knowing your budget, we were able to get your pricing down to $43,000.” Here’s a practical process for constructing a budget for your CMS project.