A barrier to entry of business intelligence for many mid-market organizations is the perception of high costs with variable returns. Many organizations seem unsure as to how to get value out of their business intelligence solutions. Beyond this, organizations may feel that business intelligence is not practical due to the high implementation and ongoing support costs. But is this really the case? With the plethora of solutions now targeted to mid-market companies, it would seem that low cost options exist to give organizations the ability to take advantage of business intelligence without breaking the bank. Because these solutions tend to offer more flexible pricing structures, it would stand to reason that options exist for organizations that fall outside the traditional view that business intelligence is out of reach for many organizations.

So, what should organizations expect to spend when looking at business intelligence solutions – and what is realistic? This article aims to explore general pricing structures of business intelligence solutions and what organizations should expect when evaluating the cost of BI solutions within their organizations.

Overall Considerations

Unfortunately, the reality of business intelligence solutions is that many options exist, and within the overall market, organizations can implement a full-scale solution or alternatively a subset of overall business intelligence (i.e., a data warehouse, dashboard, interactive reporting, etc.). The implication for organizations is that no one set of pricing criteria exists as solutions can range from free software to software priced in the $100,000 range. However, even when looking at solutions that are free or considered lower cost in terms of software pricing, organizations should realize that there will always be costs associated with these solutions that range from implementation to development and maintenance.

Looking at Free Offerings

Many solution providers offer their solutions for free. Examples of this include open source solutions and mainstream vendors that offer part of their solutions for free (e.g., QlikView for personal use). In these cases, the software costs may not exist, but organizations still require internal resources to develop and to implement their solutions. The world of open source provides the best example of the fact that free or low cost software does not mean that actual use of the software is without costs. In the case of open source, internal developers are required to develop specified solutions and general IT resources are required for implementation and maintenance. Consequently, organizations need to set aside resources or hire dedicated resources to implement these solutions.

A Subset of Business Intelligence

With industry hype surrounding the use of dashboards to visualize defined metrics and identify overall performance while being able to drill into the cause and effect of issues related to these metrics, dashboards have become one of the most popular ways to access business intelligence on the front end. In addition, dashboards can become a company’s first line of access to business intelligence in lieu of implementing a full-scale solution as a first step. In these cases, many options exist when looking at dashboards or other subsets of business intelligence. For instance, organizations can use hosted solutions and pay a monthly subscription fee. Depending on the option chosen, it may be realistic to pay $100/month for a departmental deployment. Alternatively, organizations can deploy solutions for an average of $6,000 – $10,000 for an average of 10 users (these numbers are based on overall averages provided by a series of dashboard vendors regarding the average cost of their deployments). These prices do not take into account additional costs. Mark Flaherty, VP of Marketing at InetSoft, reminds organizations that, “It is important to remember to take into account 20% over and above software costs for software maintenance.”

Full-Scale Mid-Market Solutions

Many solution providers target their offerings to mid-market companies. When looking at cost, these solutions are generally less expensive to deploy in relation to their enterprise counterparts. For instance, organizations can deploy solutions for, on average, $25,000 to $100,000; and depending on the licensing structure, these prices may be based on CPU or large end-user access. (In some cases, developer licenses will differ from end user access. Depending on the type of use required, the analysis of licensing costs becomes important and may differ significantly.) The evaluation of licensing means that organizations should take into account expansion and future use in addition to initial deployment. License fees that seem fair for two or five users may increase astronomically when organizations want to deploy business intelligence more widely across the organization.

Mid-Market versus “General” Business Intelligence

When looking at costs for mid-market deployments, the first question that comes to mind is what are the real differences of mid-market organizations? Aside from company size and access to resources, the reality is that although expectations may differ, business problems faced by organizations do not discriminate against an organization based on size. Steven Schneider, VP of Sales and Marketing at LogiXML, states that with LogiXML mid-market customers, “There is a greater focus on time to deploy. This means organizations want to know how long it will take to deploy a solution above what features and functions are offered.” This means that solutions can no longer take many months to deploy and to get value out of. Mid-market companies want to get value out of their information fast.

Between demands on lower implementation times and lower priced solutions, the reality is that BI solutions are now required to fall within general mid-market cost expectations with the ability to implement in under 3 months to be viewed as valuable to mid-market companies. Without quick turnaround times and pricing structures that are valuable to small and mid-sized enterprises, the value of BI cannot be evaluated as beneficial to these companies.

Takeaways for Mid-Sized Companies Evaluating Business Intelligence

Although price becomes an issue for organizations, or business intelligence and pricing structures are too broad depending on the chosen solution, the fact remains that organizations can implement low cost and fast time-to-deploy solutions. Whether looking at subscription-based costs or traditional in-house solutions, offerings now exist that can provide organizations with access to business intelligence. However, even with low initial costs, the reality remains that internal support and development is generally required and accounts for additional time and resources required for the successful implementation and maintenance of business intelligence.

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