Identifying relevant information Dave Schneider manages an IT department for a large corporation. Blair Murphy, vice president for marketing, has asked him to help her evaluate two statistical packages for monitoring customer purchases. Stat-Max costs $912,000, requires 2 gigabytes of disk storage space and 80 programmer hours for customization, and has no annual license fee. The software vendor provides 150 hours of user training and offers 24-hour technical support. Buy Tracker costs $500,000, requires 2 gigabytes of disk storage space and 125 programmer hours for customization, and carries a $10,000 annual license fee. The software vendor provides 150 hours of user training and offers technical support from 8:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. Central Standard Time.

Required;
What information is relevant to the decision to purchase one of these statistical packages?
What other information would you want to know?
Will the out-of-pocket cost of the software be more or less than the relevant cost? What causes the difference?