Price what waiting actually costs
Whatever a platform is worth a year, you collect none of it until it runs. This prices the gap — and says there is no delay to price when the alternative would land sooner than we would.
Everyone who would use it.
The business-case calculator puts it at about $2,100 a head, or about $63 in cash alone. Use the one you would defend. The business-case calculator, at /business-case
A custom build takes 18 to 24 months; a procurement cycle, about twelve. MangoApps build-vs-buy brief, 27 Oct 2026
3,000 employees × $2,100 a year = $6.3M a year, or $525K a month
You wait
17.5 months
The alternative at 21 months, less the 3.5 months it takes us.
It costs
$9.2M
Value the year would have returned, that you do not collect. Nobody books it, and it is spent all the same.
Every month you wait costs $525K.
That is sooner than we could deliver, so there is no delay to price. Decide on the merits instead.
That is a full year of subscription every 2.7 months of waiting — 6.6 years of it before the alternative delivers.
An enterprise rollout launches in 12-18 weeks. Most customers are live in 8-12 weeks.
What this arithmetic ignores
- It prices only the waiting. The cost of whatever you do instead — a build, a renewal, another year of the current stack — is not in it.
- It assumes the value arrives the day you launch. In practice it builds over the first quarter, so the real figure is somewhat lower.
- The launch figure is an enterprise rollout. Most customers are live sooner, which makes the gap wider, not narrower.
- Whatever you set the yearly value to, this inherits it. Set it to the cash savings alone and the delay still costs what it costs.
- This is arithmetic, not a quote.
What does one platform return in a year? What would it cost to build this yourself?
Trying to work out when to start?
Tell us what the alternative is and we will say honestly whether waiting for it costs you anything.