Analysis of Software Project Cost composition (II)

3. Software Product Line Construction
Software Projects have gradually matured after a certain stage of development, incubation, and cultivation, and even achieved sales in a local scope. At this time, software products have the "batch" production conditions for large-scale sales. software enterprises can establish corresponding production lines for mature products to achieve sales, implementation, and service of software products.
1. Hardware and Software fees
Software products can be sold in two forms: batch release and project service. Batch release refers to the production and packaging of software products into products that can be purchased by customers and put on the market. The functions and prices of such software are basically the same, and the installation and configuration process is completed by the customer according to the instructions in the manual. Project services are software that cannot be sold in batches. The sales personnel communicate with the customer and sign the project contract. The software enterprises shall install and implement the products with the customer's participation, customizes development based on customer needs when necessary, and is responsible for necessary operation training and technical training. Regardless of the sales method, hardware or software supporting the normal operation of the software must be provided.
2. Product Production Cost
The carrier of the software product and related accessories are tangible. The software product purchased or submitted to the customer must be prepared and packaged. Therefore, the cost of software production cannot be reduced. This cost is used to produce technical instructions, user manuals, and CD burning or copying of software installation programs.
3. Implementation cost
Generally, you do not need to pay for the software sold in batches. After purchasing the software, you can use it after installation is successful. Large-scale software projects, such as various enterprise management information systems, enterprise resource plans, and call centers, must be customized or configured based on the customer's actual needs, it must be implemented by professional technical staff of software enterprises.
To implement a software project, software technicians first conduct research and Demand Analysis on the customer, and determine the customer's functional requirements based on the customer's actual business and management needs, plan and design a software project that can quickly adapt to the customer, and confirm with the customer.
After the customer confirms, the technical staff can customize and develop the customer's personalized functions based on the existing software based on the software project solution, and develop the software system required by the customer.
Finally, technicians install and configure the software at the customer's site, assist the customer in software initialization, and import data from the old system to the new system if necessary. After training, the software runs and can be delivered after a period of stable operation.
The scope of training is relatively large, from the early stage of advanced training to the later stage of the operation training span is large, the training objects and training content are quite different. In addition, system management training is required for some major customers. software enterprises generally use self-help training or entrust specialized training institutions (such as Oracle-certified database engineers.
To sum up, we can see that the implementation cost of software projects is composed of requirements research, scheme design, installation, debugging and configuration, training, materials, and acceptance, if necessary, project authentication fee and third-party inspection fee are included.
4. After-sales service fee
Unlike traditional industrial products, software products, especially software projects, are more embodied in services, so the software industry focuses on services. In particular, large enterprise informatization projects require higher technical support and services. Only by providing thoughtful and timely services can the smooth operation of informatization projects be ensured. Conditional maintenance team should be established with the assistance of software enterprises to maintain, expand, and upgrade the software.
After-sales service is mainly composed of technical support, product maintenance, and product upgrade. Generally, the customer service technician is responsible for solving and recording problems encountered by the customer during the use of the software. Product maintenance is undertaken by the customer service technical engineers, mainly responsible for solving errors, faults and defects exposed during software operation, and even adjusting software adaptability, for example, adjust the format of the printed ticket and expand the number of digits of the ID card. Some software enterprises place product upgrades within the maintenance scope. However, software product upgrades are generally accompanied by software version upgrades, which are inevitable for software product industrialization and serialization, product upgrades are completed by independent development teams, and some are treated as new software projects. The upgraded software can be sold as independent software, but the old customers are generally given a preferential upgrade.
In short, the after-sales service fee of software is composed of technical support fee, maintenance fee, and upgrade development fee. The cost of software product maintenance and upgrade is much higher than the investment during product development and incubation, unless the software product has no customers and does not require maintenance!