Up till now, we haven’t verified standard budget for IT investment in general and ERP in particular. Accordingly, many ERP projects come to a deadlock for lacking of budget or misestimating about product purchasing expense right from the inception. Hence, to avoid that situation, it’s important for each enterprise to initially decide how much it can spend for ERP projects.

Generally speaking, an ERP project undergoes 4 phrases:
• Building strategy (Budget: 10 million – billions / Time: 2-6 months)
• Purchasing (Budget: millions – hundreds of million/ Time: 1-6 months)
• Implementing (Budget: hundreds of million – hundreds of billion/ Time: 1-3 years)
• Maintaining and upgrading (Budget: tens of million – tens of billion/ Time: yearly)

Notes
- ERP project’s deploying stages go towards spiral: Demand savvy, solution, implementation, check, application… These cycles are carried out in series, it is, therefore, not feasible to put in an estimate for ERP project for once
- Unlike construction projects, it’s very difficult to make right estimation about an ERP one. Accordingly, we just need a relative number for project estimates.
- Total cost of ownership establishment is an indispensable stage which helps enterprises control potential costs and avoid budget deficit and risks.

Conclusion:
Purchasing ERP is like a long- term investment, and the amount of money can change year by year. According to developed country’s experience, ERP investment should be thoroughly considered since it takes enterprises a lot of effort, money and time.