Where does the data live?
Business Intelligence South Africa turns the data already sitting in your systems into numbers people can act on, usually as dashboards rather than spreadsheets emailed around. Describe what you need to see and compare build costs, licence fees and ongoing support.
Describe what you need to see and get reporting quotes. We pass your request to LEADERR APPROVED providers who cover the area.
Get the Best QuoteWhat a Project Usually Involves
- Deciding the questions. The measures that will change a decision, not every number available.
- Connecting the sources. The accounting system, the operational system, the spreadsheets.
- Cleaning the data. Where most of the effort goes, and where projects overrun.
- A model. Relationships and calculations defined once rather than per report.
- Dashboards. Built for the person who will look at them daily.
- Refresh and security. Scheduled updates, and who may see which rows.
- Training and handover. So small changes do not need the consultant back.
Where Projects Go Wrong
- Starting with the tool. The tool is the easy part and the last decision.
- Too many measures. A dashboard with forty numbers is looked at once.
- Dirty source data. Reporting makes the data quality visible, which is uncomfortable but useful.
- No owner. A dashboard nobody is responsible for stops being trusted.
- Manual steps. Anything requiring a monthly export will be skipped by the third month.
- No agreed definition. Two departments counting revenue differently will each distrust the other's figure.
Business Intelligence Prices
Ballpark figures across the common pieces of work.
| Item | Ballpark price |
|---|---|
| Power BI Pro licence, per user per month | R150 - R230 |
| Power BI Premium per user, per user per month | R380 - R560 |
| Dashboard build, single source | R35,000 - R120,000 |
| Dashboard build, several integrated sources | R120,000 - R450,000 |
| Data warehouse, small business | R180,000 - R850,000 |
| Data cleanup and preparation, per day | R6,500 - R15,000 |
| Ongoing support and changes, per month | R8,500 - R45,000 |
| Training, per day | R8,500 - R22,000 |
Prices JUST UPDATED. Ballpark figures, rounded, excluding VAT. They reflect typical South African IT support and technology rates. They are not our prices or quotations, and no provider is bound by them. Confirm what each quotation includes, such as how many users or devices are covered, the response times, after-hours cover and licence fees.
Get a scoped price for your own data sources rather than a range.
Get the Best QuoteWhat Affects the Price
- How many data sources. The biggest driver by some distance.
- How clean the data is. Inconsistent codes and duplicates can double a project.
- Whether a warehouse is needed. Direct connections are cheaper and do not scale as far.
- How many users. Licensing is per seat until a capacity licence becomes cheaper.
- How often it refreshes. Daily is standard; near real time is a different architecture.
- Row level security. Showing each manager only their own branch adds design work.
- Who maintains it. A handover with training costs more once and less thereafter.
What to Include in Your Request
- The decisions you want to support. Three or four questions is a better brief than a report list.
- Where the data lives. Which systems, and whether they have an export or an interface.
- How much data. Rows and years of history.
- How many people will use it. And whether they need to edit or only view.
- What you do now. Usually spreadsheets, and knowing them helps.
- Your deadline. A board date or a year end often sets it.
Before the Provider Quotes
- Start with one subject area. Sales or operations, delivered in weeks rather than a year-long programme.
- Agree the definitions first. Write down what counts as a sale before anyone builds anything.
- Ask who owns the model. You should be able to open and change it without the consultant.
- Ask about licence costs. They continue long after the project ends.
- Insist on automated refresh. Any manual step will stop happening.
- Ask what happens to the spreadsheets. If they continue in parallel, the dashboard has failed.
Business Intelligence FAQs
What is business intelligence in practice?
Taking data out of the systems that create it, putting it somewhere it can be combined, and presenting it so a person can see what changed and act. For most South African businesses that means a handful of dashboards built on the accounting system and one or two operational systems.
How much does a dashboard cost?
A single-source dashboard answering a few clear questions is usually a few weeks of work. Pulling several systems together with a data warehouse underneath is a different order of project. The cost driver is almost never the dashboard; it is the state of the data behind it.
Which tool should we use?
For most South African businesses already on Microsoft 365, Power BI is the default because the licensing is familiar and the integration is good. The tool matters far less than the questions and the data, and choosing it first is the most common way to start badly.
How long does a project take?
A focused first dashboard should be four to eight weeks. If a proposal says six months before you see anything, ask for it to be broken up - a project that shows nothing for half a year usually shows nothing at all.
Can we not just use Excel?
For many businesses, yes, and honestly. Excel stops being enough when the data is too large, when several people need the same figure at once, when the monthly export is being skipped, or when two departments are producing different numbers for the same thing.
Who maintains the dashboards afterwards?
Someone must, or they drift and get distrusted. Either train an internal person as part of the handover, or budget for a small monthly support arrangement. The second is more common and costs less than rebuilding in two years.
Reporting and analytics work is quoted by several of the providers on IT Support South Africa usually alongside the data and integration work it depends on.
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