What supply chain software actually costs
Vendors publish capability, not price. These are the numbers the buyers reported: annual licence, what the implementation cost on top, and how long it ran — for 5 categories of supply chain software.
Across every category, implementation costs 1.4× to 2.7× the first-year licence. That multiple is the line missing from every vendor quote.
| Category | n | Annual licence (P25–P75) | Annual licence (median) | Implementation (median) | Multiple | Months |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WMS — Warehouse Management | 21 | $261k – $794k | $315k | $770k | 1.95× | 10 |
| SCP — Supply Chain Planning | 19 | $217k – $583k | $286k | $628k | 1.86× | 10 |
| TMS — Transportation Management | 16 | $282k – $719k | $366k | $843k | 2.66× | 9.5 |
| OMS — Order Management | 14 | $260k – $554k | $383k | $542k | 1.43× | 8.5 |
| YMS — Yard Management | 10 | $234k – $515k | $356k | $565k | 2.06× | 8.5 |
How to read the implementation multiple
The multiple is implementation cost divided by first-year licence. A 2.66× on TMS means a $366k annual licence typically arrived with roughly $843k of implementation work attached. Budgeting from the licence quote alone understates the first-year commitment by more than the licence itself in every category here.
Method
80 contract data points from 52 practitioners who bought and implemented these systems, collected directly by Supply Chain Research. Licence figures are annual subscription or licence cost. Implementation is total project spend excluding internal labour. Figures are medians and quartiles, not averages, so a single outsized programme does not move a row.
These are small samples — between 10 and 21 contracts per category. Treat them as directional ranges for budgeting and negotiation, not as quotes.
What we are not publishing
Two cuts of this data are withheld because the sample does not support them. Publishing them would put a benchmark's authority behind noise.
- by vendor — 27 of 39 vendor cells have n<3; per-vendor cost would publish single responses as a benchmark
- by company size — median license is flat ($316k-$386k) across every size band and implementation is non-monotonic; no size signal at this n
Satisfaction scores, ROI benchmarks and vendor rankings for these same categories are on Field Intelligence.
