Costing the project
You need to develop an outline budget for the project as part of the PID and then to refine and add details to the figures as the project progresses and more decisions are made about the scope and the range of services required etc.
The costs will vary depending on whether or not the records management programme is included in the EDRM project costs or treated separately as part of a records management project.
The costs will also vary depending on how many users the system has to support and how many functions/modules are required.
The costs will vary depending on whether the project team is composed of all internal staff or a mix of internal staff and consultants.
The following headings are usually used to cost an EDRM project:
| Cost heading | Description |
| EDRM hardware | Scanners and dedicated desktop and server hardware including dedicated networked storage devices |
| EDRM software | Software licenses for DDC subsystem; EDM, ERM, BPM and other ECM software modules as required. Typically charged per actual user or per concurrent user and/or per server |
| EDRM services | Supplier services to specify and design and test and implement solution plus training services; data migration or backfile scanning services; integration services; business process management services etc |
| EDRM annual support | EDRM supplier support services including provision of new versions of software – hardware support services; |
| Project staff | Internal costs charged out to project for period of secondment or dedicated staff costs charged direct to project |
| Consultancy | Fixed price for agreed job or daily rate and timesheet basis |
| Project software, hardware and training and accommodation | Costs attributable to project team including cost of accommodation, cost of any new IT hardware or software, any training required etc. |
| Records management | If the project includes records management tasks these may involve significant expenditure on consultancy fees to conduct an audit and assist with drawing up a corporate file plan or a corporate retention schedule etc; accommodation and equipment costs if the strategy for managing semi-current and archive paper records was to build a central store and furnish it with high density mobile racking etc. |
| Contingency | EDRM hardware, software or service costs may exceed budget; there may be a timetable overrun which will increase supplier, project staff and consultancy costs etc. |
More details of the cost elements associated with an EDRM project are provided in stage five when we review all the factors to be considered when building a business case.
