What actually costs money in a Revenue Cloud project

The four real items

1. Writing your catalogue. Not configuring it: writing it. What you sell, what is sold together, what is billed how. It is almost always the longest part, and the only one nobody can do for you — because it is where you discover the commercial rules nobody had settled.
2. Undecided decisions. Every open question comes back three times: once at framing, once when it blocks, once when it has to be undone. The renewal rule and the fate of live contracts are the two champions.
3. Carrying over what exists. Discovered late, it becomes a project inside the project. A mapping table between your old products and the new ones is built by hand, and it does not automate.
4. Whatever was never tested on an amount. Checking that a field is populated proves nothing. Until an invoice has been rebuilt end to end on a real contract, the project is not finished — even if it has been delivered.

What you can do before choosing anyone

Three deliverables that cost only internal time and cut the first three items.

• The list of what you sell. In commercial terms, with what is sold together. Two pages is enough, and they will be useful whatever you decide.
• Your pricing rules, written down. Including the ones that start with “it depends”. Writing them often reveals there is no rule — which is information in itself.
• The answer to “what happens to live contracts?” Agreed with finance and, if needed, with your auditors.

Reading an integrator’s proposal

Four questions, and the answers are worth more than a rate card.

1. “What, on our side, will make this project longer?” A good answer talks about your catalogue. A bad one talks about their own days.
2. “What will be irreversible?” A good answer names three or four.
3. “How will you prove an invoice is correct?” The good answer rebuilds a number on a real contract.
4. “What happens at the first renewal?” If there is no answer, you have just found the item that will overrun.

What to take away

• The budget goes into writing the catalogue and into undecided decisions, not into configuration days.
• Three internal deliverables — what you sell, your pricing rules, the fate of live contracts — cut the bill before the first tender.
• A project delivered but never tested on a real amount is not a finished project.