Business intelligence tools have a reputation for being cost-prohibitive. Maybe it's the vendors themselves who brought about this notoriety - they usually shy away from providing a precise sum as an answer to how much a BI solution costs. It's because the cost goes far beyond the one-time implementation of software and the total of upcoming expenses is hard to estimate. However, there are some costs that will always be there – we gathered all business intelligence costs in this brief summary.

Before you decide on a software vendor

The initial cost of software and following additional features are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to your total BI investment. So before you decide in favor of any solution ask yourself if you really need it. Here are some indicators that you do:

• You prepare reports manually using Excel and after every change in data you must update the reports which costs you time and resources.
• You find it difficult to pull out and join data from multiple data sources.
• You feel overwhelmed by the volume of inflowing data.
• The collected data is bound to in-house servers and you can’t access and utilize it anytime and anywhere you want.
• Only selected employees have access to real-time data and can make data-driven decisions.

If the above points concern your company then it’s high time you considered getting on board with business intelligence.

Choosing the right software

Subsequently, consider in what way the BI solution should help you to achieve your business goals. It’s essential that the scope of your implementation is broad enough to address all your current needs. Check if the software you choose can adapt to:

• Data size, complexity and amount of originating sources
• The number of people running queries at the same time
• The number of licenses
• Amount of IT resources required to deploy and maintain the system
• IT skills and programming experience of your staff

Always look for software that is scalable and flexible – it will allow you to use it for a long time without the need for investing in additional features as your data volumes will grow with time. Opt for a scalable tool that would be able to serve you even when the sources will grow and company requirements change.

Another factor which tends to increase the business intelligence cost is the fact that many tools do not actually offer a holistic solution for data management. A comprehensive data analysis process consists of data extraction, integration, querying, analysis and visualization, and these functionalities you can expect from a quality BI tool. However some tools specialize, for example, in data visualization but fail in complex cross-database analysis and you must pay additionally for other data transformation tools. It’s important to acquaint yourself with the capabilities of your prospective product. Cheaper software is often only useful for a single purpose, so before employing a particular tool, identify your needs in advance to understand what kind of business intelligence software you really need.

Getting started

Unless you go for a fast and easy self-service BI tool that can be integrated with data sources, installed on your own and used by a whole team, you must decide on your approach to the project roll-out. Depending on the employee/company involvement, each of the different alternatives will incur separate costs. Make sure to identify which approach your company wants to take and then create a short list of vendors based on that decision. Here are some of the common strategies of BI deployment:

By installments: BI systems are launched within your company, department by department, until the entire company has access. This may extend to client access as well.

Immediately: The entire company gets access to effective business intelligence solution immediately.

For executives: The project is limited to providing only C-level staff with insights into real-time performance dashboards.

Added value: BI is added to a current software choice within your company to expand functionality.

For clients: Only end users are provided with BI tools to perform self-service reporting and provide your business the opportunity to illustrate KPIs and individual successes to clients.

Cost of Deployment

It’s often the case with decision makers that they spend more on deployment than they’ve budgeted for, because they don’t have enough IT knowledge to accurately estimate the cost. In order to avoid it keep in mind that with many traditional business intelligence solutions you have to pay extra for the installation of the software. Even if you have an internal IT team, you must consider the expense associated with taking your staff away from its daily duties.

Cost of Administration

Traditional BI platforms are notoriously challenging to administer. In fact, many traditional vendors require users to go through specialized formal training to learn how to manage their software. Training is not only expensive; it takes the users away from their routine responsibilities. On the other hand if you skimp on training, your employee adoption rate will suffer considerably. If you want to avoid this cost, consider employing an online dashboard tool designed for non-IT business users that allows you to analyze and visualize data easily with an intuitive drag and drop interface.

Cost of Operations and Maintenance

When determining how much Business Intelligence costs, the expense associated with operations and maintenance must be taken into account. If the software you chose requires an IT team or an external consultant to do things like building reports, adjusting security settings or backing up data, your overall cost will considerably increase. Additionally, because some events like strategy changes or breakdowns that require additional workload are unpredictable, budgeting is nearly impossible. Some vendors entrust their data warehousing to the external, high-security cloud-based servers. Cloud technology guarantees unlimited storage capacity, easy online access and mobility, but also the reduced cost. It is cheaper than on-premises infrastructure because it removes the need for investing in data centers and large IT departments that bring first profits long time after their deployment. Cloud-based data storage is an effective solution to consider if you want to decrease the overall cost of business intelligence.

Usually Business intelligence cost goes far beyond a one-time software implementation. It’s necessary to be prepared for the further costs you will potentially incur. Inform yourself in advance what your prospective BI tool is capable of and in what way you expect it to benefit your business.