Nowadays all companies know how expensive electronic systems could be. When giants have their own in-house developed systems supported by IT teams, others should rely on third-party services. The first question usually asked is "how much does it cost?". And it is not easy to answer as many factors should be considered. These are the key points which companies should bear in mind when sending RFIs:

1. Number of users
2. User roles
3. Storage
4. Upgrades

Let's go through these points.

1. Users.

Number of users is the most obvious thing to be discussed. In most cases you receive discount ordering "big license packs". But it could be otherwise. So why it happens. The answer is that it provides allocate little technical resources for small. Plus maintenance is much easier. That drastically changes when it comes to big clients with hundreds users. Infrastructure becomes complex, data backups increase progressively. Therefore direct and indirect costs are much higher for a provider. But still in most cases you can have a discount taking more users staying within the limits of your SLA.

2. Roles

When checking commercial proposals you may notice that user price doesn't depend on user rights and access. Though that is very often when companies have some employees whose roles are very limited. That literally means that companies pay more than needed just because it has not been negotiated in advance. To save your budget it is a good practice to request discounted price for the limited functionality users.

3. Storage

We all are used to measure memory in hundreds of gigabytes or even in terabytes. Nowadays a mid level cellphone has at least 100 GB of memory. That's about 125 000 of study protocols kept in pdf format or 500 000 of scanned CVs. But if a company has no proper policy in document quality then memory should be multiplied by 10. So that's already a terabytes. Mid price for 10 GB of data on the market is about 50 USD and 2 000 USD per month per one terabyte. So we can recommend to check how much data is already stored on corporate drives and then to check its quality level. Take 10 projects and count average size. If most of documents are high resolution color photos then divide the average project size by 5. This result can be used then to count expected size of memory needed.

4. Upgrades

IT companies usually have 2 general options.

• Paid updates. When it comes to new functionality it could cost 10 000 to 50 000 USD. That could a stop factor for small and mid size companies.
• Free updates. Upgrade cost is already included in our subscription. That's more flexible and companies can predict their expenses in advance.

Therefore considering only these 4 points companies can save a lot and plan their annual budgets more precisely.

So if you have a look at Chronicles CTMS you will see all the factors are already considered:

1. You can limit the user pack to the number of users you really need (even readonly) depending on your trials activity. 2. You can change roles of users by yourself saving your money at calm periods using read-only roles. 3. With automated file size control you can increase efficiency of your storage size to additionally save money. Though the system is still cheaper than other options on the markets. 4. Updates are free. The idea is to deliver the best functionality for all the customers.

Try Chronicles CTMS and you will enjoy the benefits!