TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) is the total cost of a solution over its life cycle — initial acquisition, implementation, ongoing operation (licences, infrastructure, support), functional evolution, and eventual decommissioning or migration. It is the correct metric for comparing alternatives in IT investment decisions; the sticker price alone is frequently misleading.
In ERP and enterprise software, the typical TCO over 7-10 years breaks down roughly as: 20-30% acquisition and implementation, 40-50% operation and licences, 20-30% evolution and upgrades. Software with a low acquisition cost but a heavy dependence on customisation frequently ends up with a higher TCO than software with a larger acquisition cost but easier configuration. Honest analysis requires honesty about the expected pattern of change.
INFOS presents proposals with projected TCO over 5-7 years whenever the customer requires it, not just first-year licences. Factors such as expected support hours, Portuguese regulatory evolution (many changes in SAF-T, invoicing, GDPR), continuous team training, and integration with systems that come later — all enter the calculation. The result enables informed decisions, not local optima in the first year.