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1. No two floor covering software products are alike, so in reality, you cannot compare them feature-for-feature as one can with appliances or electronics. However, here are a few important things to keep in mind in order to ensure you are being treated fairly and honestly.

In this industry, there is not an automatic one-to-one correspondence between the amount of money you are going to spend and the quality of the product that is going to be delivered to your door.  Some legitimate factors influence price – for example, the type of database technology utilized.  However, other less-justifiable factors also drive up prices.  For example, there are companies that spend enormous amounts of money on marketing and sales, and thus must cover these overhead expenses in the price of the product. Poorly designed software will also require more resources (money) to install, train and support.  

Here are some other helpful things to consider about software pricing:

Published Price List
          Many companies refuse to publish their pricing in a public place like a website. The reason for not doing this is to allow the sales rep the freedom to charge whatever they think they can get out of you. You may get Monday’s pricing today and Tuesday’s tomorrow, yet each is promoted as a “killer deal”.  Most reputable companies will publish at least a base pricing structure on a website or price list.  

Add-on Products or Features

          Occasionally companies will only sell you part of what you need.  They quote you a low price initially, but then you find out down the road that it is going to cost you more money for the features you thought you were getting with the original package.   A great example of this is that many flooring software companies will promote the fact that their software is “B2B capable” but forget to mention that there is an extra monthly fee involved with this feature.

Training

          Many companies make their real profit via training fees.  They include minimal or even no training at all as part of the initial purchase price, meaning that you are going to pay as you go.  Be very careful here.  We have seen cases where the final price of the software is actually doubled once a company pays for all of the training required to get up and going.  You are going to require at least some training as you convert over to using new software.  The more complex and difficult a software package is to use, the more time it will require to be trained, and hence the more it will cost. You should be wary if the manufacturer won’t give you a total price (software AND training) upfront. This is a great profit center for many software companies at the expense of their clients.

Annual Support Costs

          The relationship that you are going to build with your software provider is typically a long term relationship.  From time to time, you are going to need questions answered or some other type of assistance.  It is customary across all industries (not just floor covering) for software companies to charge annual support fees.  This is how they continue to be able to provide customer support to you, rather than simply packing up shop once their software is sold.  Typical rates would be somewhere between 10 – 20% of the original purchase price. 

          The problem arises when companies are not upfront about these charges.  Companies will sometimes conceal or misrepresent what they are actually charging for these services. Hiding this information allows the software company to charge company A one price and company B a little more. So once again, you should make sure that these prices are publicly published on a website, to ensure that you aren’t company B.

          A few companies promote the fact that they have no annual maintenance costs. In this case, it is wise to carefully weigh the cost-savings with the risk.  What is going to happen to that company when new sales begin to slow down? Obviously, new sales revenue would need to be replaced with some kind of maintenance or support fee if the company is going to stay in business.  What will the impact be to you if the company does go out of business?

Subscriptions

          Subscriptions usually infer that the customer is going to lease the software instead of actually purchasing it.  In this case, the customer will not actually own the software.  One risk to consider is that if payments are discontinued, the customer will be cut off without access to their data.

          Either way, a low monthly fee is usually quoted, along with some kind of down payment or setup fee. Typically, subscriptions are always going to cost more than purchasing the software. You should calculate what your yearly cost will be to use the software.  Then figure what the overall cost will be 4-5 years from now.  You can then have a clearer comparison of pricing.