• $150 000 is the AVERAGE cost of business intelligence software for a DEPARTMENT
• ETL software (Extract transform and load) is also $150 000 on average.

And the rule of thumb for cost of effort and services is 5 times the software cost

I'm not making this up. Check the link.

In the end, Boris suggests that the cost of a single, fairly straight forward report might be $20,000. Of course as he rightly points out there are lots of variables, and it's a classic case of "it depends", but even so- clearly you want to be sure the reports add value when you are using a process that requires that kind of investment.

Boris mentions in passing that the cost of a single day of an external developer he uses for estimating is $800 USD. You can buy two licenses of Datamartist and take a friend out for dinner for that.

Don't get me wrong- for a number of applications you need the big enterprise stuff- but in my mind it makes sense to avoid it when you can. Enterprise business intelligence has its place, but there are alternatives. The rampant use of Excel spreadsheets is evidence of the fact there is huge demand for data out there. Try Datamartist and find another even more powerful way to get a the data for those cases where you need to do more than a spreadsheet, but it's not time to kick off a data warehouse project.

Although its true that in today’s economy, a lot of the multi-million dollar business intelligence projects are going to be cancelled or delayed, cheap data analysis is possible.

You just have to create cost effective data marts.

How can you reduce the cost of data analysis, cut your reporting costs, and avoid expensive business intelligence mega-projects?

Focus your efforts on Actionable Analysis

Before specifying a report or dashboard or data mart ask yourself “what action will I take based on what I see in this analysis, and how will that action move the business forward?”   If it’s not clear that some action can be taken based on the results, chances are there are better uses for the cash you’re planning on spending to get the report.  Target cost analysis first.  Reducing costs shows an immediate, verifiable return on investment.

Reduce the data scope as much as possible

Only analyze what you have to, and keep an eye on bang for your buck.  Don’t spend 80% of your budget cleaning up 5% of the data unless you really believe that data has something to teach you.  Eliminate dimensions from your data marts- really ask yourself if a dimension in the star schema is “nice to have” or critical.  Just because the data is there does not mean its worth the effort.

Reduce the report scope as much as possible

Don’t build reports no-one, or only few people use.   Consider providing an export function, so people can create their own reports in spreadsheets, rather than have hundreds of reports included in the scope of the project.

Use Desktop, Snapshot and One-time Analysis rather than full blown server based scheduled systems

There is a huge cost difference between a one-time analysis of a static data set, and a dynamic system that is able to load data daily or monthly from a transactional system automatically.  In many applications, it's the first analysis that gives you the insight.  Spending a lot of money to have the data mart refresh every day might not make sense if the first run gives you the majority of the information you need.

Obviously, its impossible to know where the insights really are- if we knew that we wouldn't have to do so much analysis.  But when resources are tight, you have to pick and choose.

Use the Datamartist Beta to create personal data marts on your desk

Sorry, I just couldn’t resist-  Datamartist is going to create a whole new price point for data marts.  If your pet business intelligence project has been delayed or canceled thanks to the economic meltdown, give Datamartist a try.  You’ll find its remarkable what can be done without programming, servers, or expensive consultants.  Once you've created a data set, you can export the information to your favorite data analysis or visualization tool and find those dollars to save.