SAïD Business School develops new methodology for evaluating BI Platforms

Study finds traditional query and reporting vendors significantly more expensive; SAS with lowest total cost of ownership

CARY, N.C.  (Jan. 30, 2006)  –  Ongoing costs for maintaining a Business Intelligence (BI) solution are just as high or higher than the actual deployment costs. In contrast, complete or end-to-end BI platforms show far lower total cost of ownership than traditional query and reporting vendors or ERP-based products, particularly when organizations implement multi-vendor products to complement their existing solutions.  These are the conclusions of a preliminary report based on research conducted by a team of students enrolled in the MBA program of Saïd Business School, University of Oxford.

As a prerequisite to the study, a vendor-neutral methodology for evaluating Business Intelligence platforms on the basis of total cost of ownership was developed. This methodology was used by the students taking part in a strategic consulting project for SAS.

According to the definition of Oxford, an enterprise business intelligence platform (EBIP) is an end-to-end solution that includes a suite of data warehousing, business intelligence, analytics and performance management software that is supported by an integrated metadata capability. “Many organizations today focus on the acquisition costs, neglecting major expenses for designing, developing, testing, maintaining and running BI applications. This study on the total cost of ownership reflects exactly this: in their test sample, incomplete EBIPs have significantly higher total costs of ownership than true EBIPs”, explained Chris Chapman, Ph.D., the supervising professor of the strategic consulting project at Saïd Business School.

Saïd Business School recognizes that EBIPs are becoming increasingly important to organizations as they realize the need to make better strategic and operational decisions in an ever increasing competitive and regulated environment that includes Sarbanes-Oxley and Basel II. Performance, standardization pressures and costs have been decisive for organizations in the BI vendor selection process. However, measuring costs and the success of IT investments has proven to be particularly challenging. The Saïd project group addresses this issue with its recent study, providing a methodology for evaluating different levels of integration and comparing incomplete EBIPs with respect to functionality and total cost of ownership. More than 140 companies in Europe deploying at least one BI solution from Business Objects, Cognos, SAP or SAS were contacted.

“The study validates that an end-to-end and fully integrated BI platform leads to a far lower total cost of ownership”, said Tonny Dierckx, director of intelligence architecture at SAS’ international headquarters. “Our BI platform is holistic by design, not by acquisition, and this translates into much lower deployment and maintenance costs. For example, by integrating technical and business metadata, SAS eliminates significant costs that would otherwise incur when organizations are forced to integrate metadata across multiple product components. The new methodology helps organizations separate the facts from the hype.”

“With SAS, we can use one technology for the entire project”, said Luc Billion, ICT Manager in the Public Health, Safety of the Food Chain and Environment division of the Federal Public Service (FPS), Belgium. "It precludes the need to insert other software packages. If we need new functions, SAS offers a solution, as part of a concept going beyond technology to support functionality.  That also contributes to cost efficiency, since we only have to master one technology.”

About Saïd Business School

Established in 1996 the Saïd Business School is a full service business school and one of Europe’s newest and fastest growing business schools. An integral part of Oxford University, the School embodies the academic rigour and forward thinking that has made Oxford a world leader in education. The School has an established reputation for research in a wide range of areas, including finance and accounting, organisational analysis, international management, strategy and operations management. The school is dedicated to developing a new generation of business leaders and entrepreneurs and conducting research not only into the nature of business, but the connections between business and the wider world. In the Financial Times ranking of business schools (Jan 05), Saïd maintained its number one ranking for a one-year MBA programme in the UK. This achievement closely followed the School’s success in HM Treasury’s ranking of the top 50 MBA programmes in the world, where it finished number one out of all the UK business schools. In the university league table published by The Guardian, Saïd ranked first of all UK universities for undergraduate business with a score of 94 out of a possible 100. The University of Oxford also ranked top for business studies in The Times report. For more information, see www.sbs.ox.ac.uk.

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