Power BI TEI report

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A FORRESTER TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ STUDY COMMISSIONED BY MICROSOFT 
 
 
The Total Economic Impact™ 
Of Microsoft Power BI 
 
Cost Savings And Business Benefits 
Enabled By Power BI 
 
JULY 2022 
 
THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF MICROSOFT POWER BI 
Table Of Contents 
Executive Summary ................................................ 1 
The Microsoft Power BI Customer Journey ......... 7 
Key Challenges ..................................................... 7 
Composite Organization ........................................ 8 
Analysis Of Benefits ............................................... 9 
Margin Increase From Direct Sales And E-
Commerce Revenue Improvements...................... 9 
Finance, HR, And Other Business Analyst Labor 
Productivities ....................................................... 11 
Operational Cost Savings Due To Improvement In 
Fact-Based Decision-Making And Self-Serve 
Projects ............................................................... 13 
Legacy Report Writer Replacement Cost 
Reductions .......................................................... 15 
Savings Due To Reduction In Use Of Other BI 
Platforms ............................................................. 17 
Unquantified Benefits .......................................... 19 
Flexibility ............................................................. 21 
Analysis Of Costs ................................................. 22 
Power BI Licensing Cost ..................................... 22 
Power BI Central Development Team And Center 
Of Excellence ...................................................... 23 
Financial Summary ............................................... 25 
Appendix A: Total Economic Impact .................. 26 
Appendix B: Endnotes ......................................... 27 
 
 
Consulting Team: Eric Hall 
 
ABOUT FORRESTER CONSULTING 
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THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF MICROSOFT POWER BI 1 
Executive Summary 
 Organizations recognize that data-driven decision-making is crucial to their success. 
Democratizing data by moving accountability and analysis capabilities to the front line is 
empowering and aligns business knowledge with decision-making. Legacy solutions and 
spreadsheet models are costly and ineffective at providing timely and dynamic data while 
having multiple business intelligence (BI) tools has shortcomings. Implementing Microsoft’s 
Power BI platform is cost effective and fulfills these new requirements. 
 
 
 
Power BI is Microsoft’s augmented business 
intelligence platform, supporting dynamic 
visualization and analysis infused with the power of 
AI. Power BI is a leader in the augmented BI platform 
space.1 This solution supports the creation of 
interactive reports and dashboards that effectively 
integrate disparate data to provide valuable insights. 
The low cost and ease of use of its dashboards and 
reports has facilitated broader user adoption than 
many legacy BI tools. The ease of Power BI report 
and dashboard development has enabled frontline 
workers and line managers to develop targeted 
solutions for their needs. 
Microsoft commissioned Forrester Consulting to 
conduct a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study and 
examine the potential return on investment (ROI) 
enterprises may realize by deploying Power BI.2 The 
purpose of this study is to provide readers with a 
framework to evaluate the potential financial impact 
of Power BI on their organizations. 
To better understand the benefits, costs, and risks 
associated with this investment, Forrester interviewed 
five representatives with experience using Power BI. 
For the purposes of this study, Forrester aggregated 
the interviewees’ experiences and combined the 
results into a single composite organization. 
Prior to using Power BI, these interviewees noted 
how their organizations met reporting and analysis 
needs with mostly static legacy reporting solutions, 
manually maintained spreadsheet reports, and an 
uncoordinated array of different BI tools. These 
approaches were both costly by themselves and 
costly through the lack of shared resources, training, 
data models, etc. 
After the investment in Power BI, the interviewees 
shared their organizations’ ability to use Power BI to 
eliminate costly legacy systems, automate key 
spreadsheet models, and mostly standardize on 
Power BI as their business intelligence platform. 
KEY FINDINGS 
Quantified benefits. Three-year, risk-adjusted 
present value (PV) quantified benefits for the 
composite organization include: 
• Margin increase from direct sales and e-
commerce revenue improvements of $32.7 
million over three years. Power BI use supports 
analyses that identify ways to improve customer 
satisfaction, identify selling opportunities, improve 
retail processes, improve e-commerce site 
processes, and identify customer retention issues 
Return on investment (ROI) 
381% 
Net present value (NPV) 
$45.01M 
KEY STATISTICS 
https://powerbi.microsoft.com/
 
THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF MICROSOFT POWER BI 2 
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 
to drive new business. Power BI dashboards 
became a service offering or a deliverable to 
customers and partners to support retention and 
improve satisfaction stats. 
• Finance, HR, and other business analyst labor 
productivities savings of $14.1 million over 
three years. Finance, HR, and business analysts 
are more productive and work on more value-add 
activities due to Power BI use, both as an end 
user and through self-service use. The composite 
organization uses Power BI to consolidate many 
reports into a few dashboards, retire analyses 
and reporting done in spreadsheets, and 
automate analyses. 
• Operational cost savings due to improvement 
in fact-based decision-making and self-serve 
projects of $2.9 million over three years. The 
composite organization uses Power BI in 
reporting and analyses to improve standard 
processes, such as inventory management, help 
desks, and supply chain, and new initiatives, 
such as pandemic-related projects. 
• Legacy report writer replacement cost 
reductions of $5.5 million over three years. 
Legacy reporting solutions are costly and fall 
short of fulfilling current reporting and analysis 
expectations. Licensing costs are high, labor to 
develop and maintain reports is high, and the 
resulting reports are not meeting the composite 
organization’s current integration, dynamics, and 
timeliness needs. 
• Savings due to reduction in use of other BI 
platforms of $1.7 million over three years. The 
composite organization uses numerous BI 
platforms. Without questioning platform 
capabilities, licensing is typically more expensive 
than Power BI and redundant training, 
development, governance, and resources, 
combined with a lack of best practices and 
shared learning make multiple approaches costly. 
Unquantified benefits. Benefits that are not 
quantified for this study include: 
• Empowerment through self-service. 
Interviewees told numerous stories of how 
frontline workers embraced Power BI and created 
new solutions on their own initiative. Interviewees 
saw greater employee engagement and better 
business outcomes. 
• A single version of the truth. With Power BI as 
their organizations’ BI delivery tool and witheffective data governance, interviewees delivered 
corporate dashboards and associated data 
sources as the source for key data metrics. The 
telecommunication’s head of workforce analytics 
shared: “Power BI is now the single source of the 
truth for HR corporatewide, from corporate 
leadership to HR leadership to business 
leadership to line managers. Our implementation 
is driving a very positive culture change.” 
• Accountability through democratization. 
Interviewees described how their Power BI 
deployment provided dashboards to managers at 
“One of our business practices 
serves municipalities. On their own 
initiative, they have developed 
external-facing dashboards so that 
the municipalities can see how 
they are doing. We helped organize 
the data, but they did all of the 
Power BI work on their own.” 
BI analyst manager, manufacturing 
and retail 
 
THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF MICROSOFT POWER BI 3 
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 
all levels with the ability to drill and pivot. There 
was a growing expectation and understanding 
that the managers were responsible for 
understanding their organization better and 
owning their decisions. 
• Data-informed decision-making. Interviewees 
described a gradual culture change going on, 
from frontline workers to managers to leadership, 
where there is great exposure to business data, 
more trust in data provided, and a means through 
Power BI dashboards to understand the data and 
to make better decisions. 
• Data governance, ease-of-use, and E5 
licensing supporting significant user 
adoption. The interviewees’ organizations 
accomplished broad adoption through a 
combination of factors. IT applied effective data 
governance, allowing for broad distribution of 
Power BI. Power BI’s ease-of-use in developing 
and viewing dashboards led to end-user-driven 
demand. The relatively low per-user cost of 
Power BI almost eliminated cost as a factor for 
most of the interviewees’ organizations. The 
manufacturing and retail’s BI analyst manager 
shared: “Everybody wants Power BI. People see 
it in meetings and they’re like ‘I want that!’ And 
so, we’re pushing the stories and development 
through our Power BI pipeline. Power BI is 
driving a culture change and we have been able 
to provide appropriate governance to ensure data 
integrity, a single version of the truth, and proper 
rights.” 
• Gen2 and Power BI continuous 
enhancements. Interviewees spoke of Power BI 
Premium’s Gen2 and the steady release of 
Power BI enhancements as both game changers 
and confidence builders on the continued 
competitiveness of the Power BI platform. The 
telecommunications company’s head of 
workforce analytics noted, “There is a corporate 
team that does a review of the visualization 
space very six months and they continually come 
back with Power BI as the best choice for us.” 
 
“All store managers now have 
scorecards delivered through 
Power BI with the ability to 
understand their operations and 
make adjustments to run a really 
good operation. They are able to 
understand sales, promotions, 
inventory, and labor all in one 
place.” 
BI analyst manager, manufacturing 
and retail 
“Prior to E5 licensing, we had 
1,400 Power BI users building 
content and 11,000 consumers; 
with E5, all 30,000 employees can 
build content. The governance 
we have in place is super solid 
so people can do whatever they 
need to do.” 
Analytics architect, manufacturing 
automation 
 
THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF MICROSOFT POWER BI 4 
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 
• Synapse, Teams, Microsoft Office, and Power 
Apps integration synergies. Interviewees 
spoke of the value of having numerous other 
Microsoft products working effectively with Power 
BI, most notably Synapse Analytics and Power 
Apps. Synapse Analytics was a source for data 
with built-in analytics, while Power Apps, 
Microsoft’s low-code tool, utilized Power BI for 
delivering results. 
 
Costs. Risk-adjusted PV costs include: 
• Power BI licensing costs. Power BI has basic 
user licensing and Premium licensing for 
developers and production environments. For the 
composite organization, this cost is $7.1 million 
over three-years. 
• Power BI central development team and 
center of excellence. The composite 
organization staffs development organizations 
while transitioning away from legacy reporting 
platforms and other BI platforms. A Power BI 
center of excellence is created to facilitate the 
democratization of Power BI and the evolution to 
empowerment of frontline workers and managers 
via Power BI’s self-service capabilities. For the 
composite organization, this cost is $4.8 million 
over three-years. 
The representative interviews and financial analysis 
found that a composite organization experiences 
benefits of $56.84 million over three years versus 
costs of $11.83 million, adding up to a net present 
value (NPV) of $45.01 million and an ROI of 381%. 
“A clear differentiator for Power BI 
over other BI tools is the integration 
that it has with other Microsoft 
products. For example, we have had 
exponential growth in the use of Power 
Apps and that growth has paralleled 
our growth in Power BI use.” 
Director of BI, healthcare 
“We were on an early tester of 
Power BI Premium Gen2, and it 
worked so well that after 60 days 
we cut our executives’ reports over 
to it and they immediately began to 
experience the benefit of it. Earlier 
this year, we cut all of our ad hoc 
and self-service reports over to 
Gen2 and we saw existing 
performance issues drop by 90%.” 
Analytics architect, manufacturing 
automation 
 
THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF MICROSOFT POWER BI 5 
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
ROI 
381% 
BENEFITS PV 
$56.84M 
NPV 
$45.01M 
PAYBACK 
of the interviewees. 
 
CASE STUDY 
Employed four fundamental elements of TEI in 
modeling the investment impact: benefits, costs, 
flexibility, and risks. Given the increasing 
sophistication of ROI analyses related to IT 
investments, Forrester’s TEI methodology 
provides a complete picture of the total 
economic impact of purchase decisions. Please 
see Appendix A for additional information on the 
TEI methodology. 
DISCLOSURES 
Readers should be aware of the following: 
This study is commissioned by Microsoft and delivered by 
Forrester Consulting. It is not meant to be used as a 
competitive analysis. 
Forrester makes no assumptions as to the potential ROI 
that other organizations will receive. Forrester strongly 
advises that readers use their own estimates within the 
framework provided in the study to determine the 
appropriateness of an investment in Power BI. 
Microsoft reviewed and provided feedback to Forrester, 
but Forrester maintains editorial control over the study 
and its findings and does not accept changes to the study 
that contradict Forrester’s findings or obscure the 
meaning of the study. 
Microsoft provided the customer names for the interviews 
but did not participate in the interviews. 
 
 
 
THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF MICROSOFT POWER BI 7 
The Microsoft Power BI Customer Journey 
Drivers leading to the Power BI investment 
 
 
 
KEY CHALLENGES 
Prior to implementing Power BI as a corporate-level 
tool, the interviewees’ organizations performed 
reporting and analysis through a combination of 
legacy reporting tools, siloed BI tool implementations, 
and spreadsheet models. The approach had inherent 
issues with redundant efforts, lack of governance, 
lack of standards, and suboptimal results. 
The interviewees noted how their organizations 
struggled with common challenges, including: 
• Legacy reporting solutions that were 
expensive and lacked both dashboards and 
dynamic analysis. Typically, legacy reporting 
solutions created thousands of reports. 
Licensing, labor, and resources were all 
expensive, while the reports were static and 
didn’t effectively provide integrated views, such 
as dashboards. 
• Spreadsheet-based reports and analysis that 
were labor-intensive, prone to errors, and 
static. Interviewees shared that spreadsheet 
reporting was still done for department managers 
and corporate leadership. The process was 
labor-intensive and error prone due to manual 
data entry. Efforts were frequently redundant and 
nonstandardized with the same general 
requirements by different organizations. 
Governance and data protection were non-
existent due to the ability to share files by email 
or other means. 
• Multiple modern BI tools with no 
coordination, pricing discounts, or other 
economies-of-scale benefits. Interviewees 
noted that there was an unknown number of BI 
tools deployed throughout the corporation. There 
was no, or limited, best practice sharing, data 
sharing, standardization, and data governance. 
 
 
“We have a lot of redundant data 
and redundant reports out there 
with two legacy reporting systems 
that are costing us a significant 
amount of money.” 
BI resource manager, retail 
Interviews 
Role Industry Region Revenue Size 
BI analyst manager Manufacturing and retail Global $1 billion 5,000 employees 
Analytics architect Manufacturing automation Global $7 billion >25,000 employees 
BI resource manager Retail Global >$50 billion >200,000 employees 
Head of workforce 
analytics 
Telecommunications Global $20 billion >75,000 employees 
Director of BI Healthcare United States >$50 billion >50,000 employees 
 
 
THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF MICROSOFT POWER BI 8 
THE MICROSOFT POWER BI CUSTOMER JOURNEY 
• No single version of the truth under multiple 
BI platforms with associated productivities, 
governance, standardization, and best 
practice sharing. The head of workforce 
analytics at the telecommunications company 
said: “We have had a lot of M&A activity, 
including a major merge around five years ago 
that nearly doubled our size. That brings with it 
numerous data consolidation, governance, 
reporting, and analysis challenges. The need for 
one BI solution became more obvious at that 
point.” 
• No support of culture changes, such as line-
management accountability through data-
driven decision-making and self-service 
reporting and analysis. Interviewees spoke of 
culture change that included empowering 
managers by providing them with timely and 
appropriate information to effectively run their 
organizations. They also said that democratizing 
data to the individual contributor level would lead 
to better outcomes because of their knowledge 
of their own work processes. 
COMPOSITE ORGANIZATION 
Based on the interviews, Forrester constructed a TEI 
framework, a composite company, and a ROI 
analysis that illustrates the areas financially affected. 
The composite organization is representative of the 
five interviewees, and it is used to present the 
aggregate financial analysis in the next section. The 
composite organization has the following 
characteristics: 
Description of composite. The global organization 
has revenues of $10 billion with 80% in direct sales 
and 20% through e-commerce. The composite 
organization has 40,000 employees. There are 1,000 
finance, HR, and business analysts frequently 
building out spreadsheet models and reports to 
support business reporting needs. The firm has one 
or more legacy solutions that produce thousands of 
static or near-static reports. Multiple deployments of 
varying BI platforms occur. The composite 
organization has E5 licensing, which includes end-
user Power BI licensing for most employees. 
Deployment characteristics. The deployment 
approach starts with a central development team 
supported by outside Power BI contractors. Their 
mission is to provide early wins in functional areas, 
such as finance, HR, and sales, while communicating 
value and educating on Power BI as a self-service 
platform. A center of excellence (COE) for Power BI 
is created and legacy report developers are 
transitioned to Power BI or other positions as legacy 
reports are consolidated into Power BI dashboards 
then retired. There is no corporate edict that non-
Power BI reporting platforms are eliminated but there 
is a combination of division rulings to that effect and 
natural decisions to migrate to Power BI due to cost 
savings and the wide acceptance of Power BI 
throughout the organization. 
 
 
Key assumptions 
• $10 billion in revenue 
• 20% e-commerce sales 
• 40,000 employees 
• Thousands of legacy 
reports 
• Multiple BI platforms 
 
 
THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF MICROSOFT POWER BI 9 
Analysis Of Benefits 
Quantified benefit data as applied to the composite 
 
 
 
 
MARGIN INCREASE FROM DIRECT SALES AND 
E-COMMERCE REVENUE IMPROVEMENTS 
Evidence and data. Interviewees’ organizations 
used Power BI to improve sales and supply chain 
processes; identify product and service sales 
opportunities; improve customer satisfaction and 
retention; and provide Power BI in offerings increase 
sales. 
• Interviewees described using Power BI to 
improve their e-commerce sales processes as 
well as their retail sales processes. Very detailed 
interaction data was available for e-commerce 
activity and was used to optimize the customer 
experience and drive new sales. For instance, a 
frontline worker created Power BI model that was 
used to identify an improvement opportunity for 
the point-of-sale system that improved customer 
experience. 
• Interviewees’ organizations used Power BI to 
analyze product and service sales more easily, 
from more perspectives, and with more depth 
 
Total Benefits 
Ref. Benefit Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Total Present Value 
Atr 
Margin increase from direct 
sales and e-commercerevenue improvements 
$9,792,000 $14,400,000 $15,840,000 $40,032,000 $32,703,471 
Btr 
Finance, HR, and other 
business analyst labor 
productivities 
$3,861,000 $5,791,500 $7,722,000 $17,374,500 $14,098,017 
Ctr 
Operational cost savings due 
to improvement in fact-based 
decision-making and self-
serve projects 
$810,000 $1,350,000 $1,350,000 $3,510,000 $2,866,341 
Dtr 
Legacy report writer 
replacement cost reductions 
$1,080,000 $2,616,000 $3,120,000 $6,816,000 $5,487,904 
Etr 
Savings due to reduction in 
use of other BI platforms 
$480,000 $788,000 $796,000 $2,064,000 $1,685,650 
 Total benefits (risk-adjusted) $16,023,000 $24,945,500 $28,828,000 $69,796,500 $56,841,383 
 
“Our new B2C website provided us 
with the ability to model our entire 
product review and checkout 
processes within Power BI. We 
were able to identify exactly where 
people were dropping off so we 
would lose the sale. We made 
adjustments that led to a 
significant reduction in drop-offs at 
those key points. We associated 
those changes with a 10% to 15% 
increase in e-commerce revenue.” 
BI analyst manager, manufacturing 
and retail 
 
THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF MICROSOFT POWER BI 10 
ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS 
than previously available. The BI analyst 
manager in manufacturing and retail noted the 
organization better handled backorders during 
recent supply chain challenges that increased 
sales and customer satisfaction. 
• The interviewees have found that using Power BI 
to optimize customer success drove additional 
revenue and preserved revenue through 
customer retention improvements. 
• Power BI was used as a tool to optimize 
customers’ use of products or services that the 
interviewees’ organizations provide. Power BI is 
sold as an add-on service. The manufacturing 
automation analytics architect said, “We are 
currently building out Power BI solutions as part 
of our product solutions, driving additional 
revenue and providing a service to our 
customers.” 
• The BI analyst manager at a manufacturing and 
retail organization noted their organization used 
Power BI to identify that delivering products to 
stores with one or two components missing was 
advantageous to waiting until the components 
became available and assembling at the 
manufacturing facility. This allowed 
manufacturing and assembly to continue and 
enabled sales to occur as soon as necessary 
components became available. 
Modeling and assumptions. Forrester assumes the 
following for the composite organization: 
• The composite organization’s revenue is $10 
billion per year with an 80%:20% split between 
direct sales and e-commerce. 
• Direct sales improvement due to Power BI 
supplied reporting and analysis is 1.2% in Year 1, 
1.8% in Year 2, and 2.0% in Year 3. 
• E-commerce sales improvement due to Power BI 
supplied reporting and analysis is 2.0% in Year 1, 
2.8% in Year 2, and 3.0% in Year 3. 
• The composite organization’s net margin is 8%. 
Risks. Risks that could impact the realization of this 
benefit include the following: 
• The maturity of retail and e-commerce 
processes. 
“Our sales intelligence dashboard 
consolidated between 50 and 60 
reports. People can see 
relationships and slice and dice 
much better than they were able 
to before.” 
BI resource manager, retail 
“One valuable use case has 
produced measurable customer 
retention improvements by 
identifying customers that we 
should be paying attention to 
due to issues or by identifying 
opportunities. This Power BI 
solution is one of numerous 
ways that we are using Power BI 
to meet or exceed customer 
needs.” 
Analytics architect, manufacturing 
automation 
 
THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF MICROSOFT POWER BI 11 
ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS 
• The level of empowerment and democratization 
of data that an organization will allow. 
• The organization’s net margin. 
Results. To account for these risks, Forrester 
adjusted this benefit downward by 10%, yielding a 
three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) 
of $32.7 million. 
 
FINANCE, HR, AND OTHER BUSINESS ANALYST 
LABOR PRODUCTIVITIES 
Evidence and data. Power BI was used to 
consolidate many reports into a few dashboards, 
retire analyses and reporting done in spreadsheets, 
automate analyses, and support self-service BI. 
Finance, HR, and business analysts were more 
productive and worked on more value-add activities. 
• Prior to Power BI, analysts would frequently have 
to review tens to hundreds of legacy reports to 
perform both regular and initiative-based 
analyses. With Power BI reporting, they looked at 
integrated dashboards that connect data in single 
Margin Increase From Direct Sales And E-Commerce Revenue Improvements 
Ref. Metric Source Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 
A1 Direct sales revenue Composite $8,000,000,000 $8,000,000,000 $8,000,000,000 
A2 
Revenue improvement due to supply chain 
and product adjustments attributed to new 
reporting within Power BI 
Interviews 1.2% 1.8% 2.0% 
A3 E-commerce revenue Composite $2,000,000,000 $2,000,000,000 $2,000,000,000 
A4 
Revenue improvement due to analyzing 
and improving consumers’ product review 
and checkout experience 
Interviews 2.0% 2.8% 3.0% 
A5 
Subtotal: Revenue improvement associated 
with new reporting and analysis using 
Power BI 
A1*A2+A3*A4 $136,000,000 $200,000,000 $220,000,000 
A6 Margin TEI standard 8% 8% 8% 
At 
Margin increase from direct sales and e-
commerce revenue improvements 
A5*A6 $10,880,000 $16,000,000 $17,600,000 
 Risk adjustment ↓10% 
Atr 
Margin increase from direct sales and e-
commerce revenue improvements (risk-
adjusted) 
 $9,792,000 $14,400,000 $15,840,000 
Three-year total: $40,032,000 Three-year present value: $32,703,471 
 
“Prior to Power BI we prepared a 
52-page HR ‘state of the union’ 
deck that went to corporate and 
HR leadership. The source was 
scorecards and metrics from 
spreadsheets. We were able to 
present an automated version to 
leadership in only two months and 
it floored them. We continue to 
add new features and capabilities 
as well as additional HR KPI’s.” 
Head of workforce analytics, 
telecommunications 
 
THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF MICROSOFT POWER BI 12 
ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS 
views while allowing drilling and pivoting to fully 
understand the facts behind the reporting. 
• Analysts were historically heads-down in entering 
data from reports into spreadsheets. This manual 
effort was time-consuming, error prone, and 
frequently repeated by other analysts across the 
organization. Power BI facilitated the automation 
of such reporting, enabling a single version of the 
truth in addition to providing significant labor 
savings. 
• There were major tasks that finance, HR, and 
business analysts did that were worth the effort to 
automate with proper data sourcing and Power BI 
reporting. Monthly and quarterly reporting, such 
as sales performance and reorganizations, were 
automated while providing more timely and 
thorough insights. The telecommunications 
industry head of workforce analytics provided an 
automation example: “We have a love affair with 
re-organizations. There were nine people 
managing the HR re-organization activities, 
producing a monthly report. Now, you can see 
who came in and who left the next day.” 
• In addition to the delivery of Power BI 
dashboards to the analysts, analysts were 
empowered to self-serve using Power BI. 
Analysts automated their own work with Power BI 
while frequently contributing to improvements to 
published Power BI dashboards. 
Modeling and assumptions. Forrester assumes the 
following for the composite organization: 
• The composite organization has 40,000 
employees, 1,000 of whom are finance, HR, or 
business analysts (2.5% of employees). 
• The analyst adoption of Power BI grows over 
time from 75%in Year 1 to 100% in Year 3. 
• Average time savings per analyst grows over 
time from 4 hours per week in Year 1 to 6 hours 
per week by Year 3. 
• The productivity recapture rate, the percentage of 
time saved applied to additional work, is 50%. 
• The average fully loaded hourly labor cost is $55 
per hour. 
Risks. Risks that could impact the realization of this 
benefit include the following: 
• Consolidation of legacy reporting into Power BI 
will be based upon corporate and divisional 
initiatives. 
• Retirement of spreadsheet practices requires a 
cultural change and typically a collaborative 
effort. 
• The adoption of Power BI for self-service will vary 
based upon cultural factors as well as training, 
best practices sharing, and data availability. 
Results. To account for these risks, Forrester 
adjusted this benefit downward by 10%, yielding a 
three-year, risk-adjusted total PV of $14.1 million 
“Both the line managers and the 
HR analysts are saving time due 
to the Power BI dashboards. Line 
managers have required tasks 
that take about 50% less time 
because the data is right there for 
them. The HR analysts have 
similar time savings for analyses 
that they perform, both routine 
activities and with initiatives.” 
Head of workforce analytics, 
telecommunications 
 
THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF MICROSOFT POWER BI 13 
ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS 
OPERATIONAL COST SAVINGS DUE TO 
IMPROVEMENT IN FACT-BASED DECISION-
MAKING AND SELF-SERVE PROJECTS 
Evidence and data. Interviewees described use 
cases throughout their organizations where Power BI 
improved upon standard processes, such as 
inventory management, to new initiatives, such as 
pandemic-related projects. Common themes 
provided were democratization, empowerment, 
manager accountability, device agnostic delivery, and 
self-service BI. 
• Power BI was used to provide process 
improvements as well as address operational 
problems. Interviewees spoke of their ability to 
get a clearer picture on their current operational 
state, which helped them determine how to 
improve processes as well as their ability to 
perform more advanced analyses than they could 
do previously. The manufacturing automation 
analytics architect said: “We developed a call 
center assistant solution that utilizes Power BI 
with AI features inside. It has improved our help 
desk agents’ ability to provide more meaningful 
responses to customers needing help.” 
Finance, HR, And Other Business Analyst Labor Productivities 
Ref. Metric Source Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 
B1 
Analysts and others producing spreadsheet 
and reporting analyses 
Composite 1,000 1,000 1,000 
B2 Percentage using Power BI Interviews 75% 90% 100% 
B3 
Average time saved per week due to 
centralized reporting or improved self-
service 
Interviews 4 5 6 
B4 Subtotal: Hours saved per year 52 weeks*B1*B2*B3 156,000 234,000 312,000 
B5 Productivity recapture Assumption 50% 50% 50% 
B6 Fully loaded hourly labor cost TEI standard $55 $55 $55 
Bt 
Finance, HR, and other business analyst 
labor productivities 
B4*B5*B6 $4,290,000 $6,435,000 $8,580,000 
 Risk adjustment ↓10% 
Btr 
Finance, HR, and other business analyst 
labor productivities (risk-adjusted) 
 $3,861,000 $5,791,500 $7,722,000 
Three-year total: $17,374,500 Three-year present value: $14,098,017 
 
“Supply chain issues are a big 
deal for us. Manufacturing would 
typically come to a standstill if a 
single part was missing. Using 
Power BI, we are building out what 
we can at the factory then ship to 
warehouses. When the parts 
become available then they get 
shipped to appropriate locations 
to keep the pipeline going. 
Executives from major suppliers 
have told our CEO that we do a 
great job of keeping things 
moving.” 
BI analyst manager, manufacturing 
and retail 
 
THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF MICROSOFT POWER BI 14 
ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS 
• Interviewees spoke of the ability of delivery 
Power BI reports to desktops, laptops, tablets, 
and smartphones. This expanded Power BI’s 
usefulness by allowing Power BI to be used 
wherever their people were. 
• Interviewees described how they were able to 
quickly apply Power BI in their work on new 
initiatives. Interviewees felt that Power BI’s use 
helped them maximize results and, sometimes, 
saved initiatives. The healthcare director of BI 
described one such project: “We had a major 
humanitarian initiative during COVID-19 to 
provide food to seniors isolated in their homes. 
We built a Power App solution from scratch to 
manage third-party deliveries and there were 
major errors in deliveries. The team started using 
Power BI to analyze the data and reduced the 
error rate from a high of 70% to below 5%. 
Millions of meals have been successfully 
delivered to seniors as a result.” 
Modeling and assumptions. Forrester assumes the 
following for the composite organization: 
• Cost of goods sold is 30% of the $10 billion in 
corporate revenue. 
• Operational cost savings is 0.03% in Year 1 and 
0.05% in subsequent years attributed to Power BI 
use cases. 
Risks. Risks that could impact the realization of this 
benefit include the following: 
• The relation of cost of goods sold to revenue may 
vary. 
• The level of empowerment and democratization 
of data that an organization will allow. 
• The adoption of Power BI may vary. 
Results. To account for these risks, Forrester 
adjusted this benefit downward by 10%, yielding a 
three-year, risk-adjusted total PV of $2.9 million. 
“As part of a green initiative, we 
were able to use Power BI to 
visualize the relationship of size, 
weight, and type of product to 
how it was packaged. We figured 
out new ways of packaging our 
products, which reduced tons of 
nonrecyclable waste that was 
ending up in landfills, while 
saving us money and helping the 
environment. The team that did 
this presented their success to 
our CEO.” 
BI analyst manager, manufacturing 
and retail 
“Our near-real-time inventory 
solution works effectively on 
laptops, tablets, and phones. This 
mobility has helped us in our 
warehouses and in supporting 
our customers within our stores.” 
BI resource manager, retail 
 
THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF MICROSOFT POWER BI 15 
ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS 
 
LEGACY REPORT WRITER REPLACEMENT 
COST REDUCTIONS 
Evidence and data. Interviewees noted that their 
legacy reporting solutions were a burden to their 
central IT and BI organizations for some time. 
Licensing costs were very high, labor to develop and 
maintain reports was high, and the resulting reports 
were not meeting current integration, dynamics, and 
timeliness expectations. 
• Interviewees agreed that legacy licenses costs 
have not remained competitive, and they saw a 
net reduction in licensing costs even with the 
expansion in overall reporting. 
• Infrastructure costs were also relatively high and 
infrastructure was mostly internally managed 
because it was on-premises, so transitioning to 
Power BI provided further cost reductions. 
• Interviewees shared that the labor to create 
legacy reports that parallel Power BI reports was 
greater, and the legacy maintenance cost was 
higher. Finally, they called out that there was 
greater risk because legacy report writers were 
getting harder to come by over time. 
Operational Cost Savings Due To Improvement In Fact-Based Decision-Making And Self-Serve 
Projects 
Ref. Metric Source Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 
C1 Corporate revenue Composite $10,000,000,000 $10,000,000,000 $10,000,000,000 
C2 Cost of goods sold as percent of revenue Assumption 30% 30% 30% 
C3 Cost of goods sold (COGS) C1*C2 $3,000,000,000 $3,000,000,000 $3,000,000,000 
C4 
Operational cost savings attributed to 
Power BI deployment 
Interviews 0.03% 0.05% 0.05% 
Ct 
Operational cost savings due to 
improvement in fact-based decision-making 
andself-serve projects 
C3*C4 $900,000 $1,500,000 $1,500,000 
 Risk adjustment ↓10% 
Ctr 
Operational cost savings due to 
improvement in fact-based decision-making 
and self-serve projects (risk-adjusted) 
 $810,000 $1,350,000 $1,350,000 
Three-year total: $3,510,000 Three-year present value: $2,866,341 
 
“The transition from legacy 
reporting processes to Power BI 
has meant a much better 
product and a time savings of 
between 15% and 25% FTEs for 
the same reporting, both in our 
HR and finance reporting 
areas.” 
Head of workforce analytics, 
telecommunications 
 
THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF MICROSOFT POWER BI 16 
ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS 
Modeling and assumptions. Forrester assumes the 
following for the composite organization: 
• Legacy licensing costs, which are $1 million per 
year, are halved in Year 1, reduced by 90% in 
Year 2, and eliminated in Year 3. 
• Legacy infrastructure costs, which are $500,000 
per year, are reduced by 25% in Year 1 and 
eliminated by Year 3. 
• The legacy reporting team, which consists of 20 
report developers, is reduced by 25% in Year 1, 
80% in Year 2, and is fully transitioned by Year 3. 
• The fully loaded cost of report writing developers 
is $120,000 per year. 
Risks. Risks that could impact the realization of this 
benefit include the following: 
• The number and size of the existing legacy 
implementations may vary. 
• The maturity of the IT infrastructure, data, and 
applications will affect resource related cost 
reduction. 
• The speed of the transition from legacy reporting 
to Power BI reporting will be affected by both 
business and IT culture changes. 
• Labor costs may vary. 
Results. To account for these risks, Forrester 
adjusted this benefit downward by 20%, yielding a 
three-year, risk-adjusted total PV of $5.5 million. 
 
Legacy Report Writer Replacement Cost Reductions 
Ref. Metric Source Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 
D1 Licensing cost reduction Composite $500,000 $900,000 $1,000,000 
D2 
Net IT infrastructure resource and labor 
reduction 
 Composite $250,000 $450,000 $500,000 
D3 Legacy report writing team Composite 20 20 20 
D4 Reassignment percentage Composite 25% 80% 100% 
D5 
Net FTE reduction of central report writing 
team for original legacy reports 
 D3*D4 5.0 16.0 20.0 
D6 
Average fully loaded labor cost for report 
writing team (annual) 
 TEI standard $120,000 $120,000 $120,000 
D7 
Subtotal: Average fully loaded labor cost for 
report writing team 
D5*D6 $600,000 $1,920,000 $2,400,000 
Dt 
Legacy report writer replacement cost 
reductions 
D1+D2+D7 $1,350,000 $3,270,000 $3,900,000 
 Risk adjustment ↓20% 
Dtr 
Legacy report writer replacement cost 
reductions (risk-adjusted) 
 $1,080,000 $2,616,000 $3,120,000 
Three-year total: $6,816,000 Three-year present value: $5,487,904 
 
 
THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF MICROSOFT POWER BI 17 
ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS 
SAVINGS DUE TO REDUCTION IN USE OF 
OTHER BI PLATFORMS 
Evidence and data. Interviewees’ organizations saw 
an elimination or dramatic reduction in the use of 
other BI tools and have saved them a significant 
amount of money. They noted that there were 
licensing cost savings due to Power BI’s low cost. 
They also noted that there were savings in training, 
cloud resources, collaboration, and best practices 
sharing. 
• Interviewees noted that Power BI licensing was 
less expensive than other BI tools, especially 
considering E5 licensing rates. 
• Interviewees spoke of numerous benefits of 
having one BI platform from a user perspective. 
First, end users only had to learn how to use one 
user interface style. Users were more likely to 
develop their own dashboards if they didn’t have 
to learn multiple tools or fear that they were 
learning to use a tool that may go away 
someday. 
• An area called out for major savings was with 
central infrastructure, report development, and 
maintenance activities and resources. Having 
one BI platform supported simplified architecture 
and governance, lower training and collaboration 
costs, and better best practice development and 
sharing. 
Modeling and assumptions. Forrester assumes the 
following for the composite organization: 
• The annual licensing cost of multiple BI tools 
(non-Power BI) is $300,000 and reduces to 
$150,000 in Year 1 and is eliminated by Year 2. 
• The annual end-user training and collaboration 
cost reduction associated with eliminating other 
BI tools is $50,000, and reduces to $25,000 in 
Year 1 and is eliminated by Year 2. 
• The annual self-service labor productivities 
associated with eliminating the other BI tools is 
$45,000, and reduces to $25,000 in Year 1 and is 
eliminated by Year 3. 
• IT and BI team labor productivities for training, 
planning, development, collaboration, and 
maintenance is $600,000, and reduces to 
$400,000 in Year 1 and is eliminated by Year 2. 
Risks. Risks that could impact the realization of this 
benefit include the following: 
• The number and size of other vendor BI 
implementations may vary. 
• The corporate culture supporting standardization, 
or independence, may vary considerably. 
Results. To account for these risks, Forrester 
adjusted this benefit downward by 20%, yielding a 
three-year, risk-adjusted total PV of $1.7 million. 
“We’ve had a number of the other 
BI tools, just like everyone else 
has. We deprecated most, if not all, 
of them not by mandate but by the 
value Power BI provides and 
corporate covering the cost via E5 
licensing. I would be more shocked 
if another BI tool is being used for 
something of a serious size.” 
Analytics architect, manufacturing 
automation 
 
THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF MICROSOFT POWER BI 18 
ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS 
 
 
Savings Due To Reduction In Use Of Other BI Platforms 
Ref. Metric Source Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 
E1 License cost reduction Customer $150,000 $300,000 $300,000 
E2 End-user labor productivities for single tool training and collaboration Customer $25,000 $50,000 $50,000 
E3 Self-serve labor productivities for single tool training and collaboration Customer $25,000 $35,000 $45,000 
E4 
IT and BI team labor productivities of single platform: training, architecture, 
development, collaboration, and maintenance 
Customer $400,000 $600,000 $600,000 
Et Savings due to reduction in use of other BI platforms E1+E2+E3+E4 $600,000 $985,000 $995,000 
 Risk adjustment ↓20% 
Etr Savings due to reduction in use of other BI platforms (risk-adjusted) $480,000 $788,000 $796,000 
Three-year total: $2,064,000 Three-year present value: $1,685,650 
 
“Managing multiple platforms is much more costly than managing 
a shared infrastructure. Honestly, there’s millions of dollars that 
were going into these other solutions that are now no longer going 
there. It is not just licensing, it includes training, duplicated data, 
and support.” 
Analytics architect, manufacturing automation 
 
THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF MICROSOFT POWER BI 19 
ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS 
 
UNQUANTIFIED BENEFITS 
Additional benefits that customers experienced but 
were not able to quantify include: 
• Empowerment through self-service. 
Interviewees told numerous stories of how 
frontline workers embraced Power BI and created 
new solutions on their own initiative. Interviewees 
saw greater employee engagement and better 
business outcomes. The manufacturing and retail 
BI analyst manager shared: “Frontline workers in 
retail have caught inventory stuff and even fraud. 
They have even found things using Power BI that 
have led to improvements to our point-of-sale 
software.” 
• Accountability through democratization. 
Interviewees described how their Power BI 
deployment provided dashboards to managers at 
all levels with the ability to drill and pivot. There 
was a growing expectation and understandingthat the managers were responsible for 
understanding their organization better and 
owning their decisions. 
• Single version of the truth. With Power BI as 
their organizations’ BI delivery tool and with 
effective data governance, interviewees delivered 
corporate dashboards and associated data 
sources as the source for key data metrics. 
• Gen2 and Power BI continuous 
enhancements. Interviewees spoke of Power BI 
Premium’s Gen2 and the steady release of 
Power BI enhancements as both game changers 
and confidence builders on the continued 
competitiveness of the Power BI platform. The 
manufacturing and retail BI analyst manager 
said, “Microsoft realized the power of the tool and 
really dedicated resources to keep improving it.” 
“We have a center of excellence 
that meets for 2 ‘power’ hours 
every Friday to help users solve 
problems, and monthly to go over 
new features, discuss use cases, 
make connections, etc. Then we 
have an annual summit to bring 
Power BI enthusiasts together. All 
of this is driving adoption and 
user satisfaction while reducing 
our solution support costs.” 
Analytics architect, manufacturing 
automation 
“We are democratizing dashboards 
to the business, not just HR. This 
is driving empowerment and 
accountability. They are getting the 
message that … this is your 
organization. You own it. HR 
doesn’t. You now have near real-
time access to your workforce 
metrics. Dashboards include 
education, recruitment, health, 
safety, and corporate security.” 
Head of workforce analytics, 
telecommunications 
 
THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF MICROSOFT POWER BI 20 
ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS 
• Data governance, ease-of-use, and E5 
licensing supporting significant user 
adoption. The interviewees’ organizations 
accomplished broad adoption through a 
combination of factors. IT applied effective data 
governance, allowing for broad distribution of 
Power BI. Power BI’s ease-of-use in developing 
and viewing dashboards led to end-user-driven 
demand. The low per-user cost of Power BI 
eliminated cost as a factor for most of the 
interviewees’ organizations. 
• Synapse Analytics, Microsoft Office, and 
Power Apps integration synergies. 
Interviewees spoke of the value of having 
numerous other Microsoft products working 
effectively with Power BI, most notably Synapse 
Analytics and Power Apps. Synapse Analytics 
was a source for data with built-in analytics, while 
Power Apps, Microsoft’s low-code tool, utilized 
Power BI for delivering results. The retail BI 
resource manager shared, “Having the data 
warehouse in Synapse helped make us 
successful sooner.” The manufacturing 
automation analytics architect described the 
value of having both Synapse and Gen2: “There 
is a synergy in having Synapse and Gen2, giving 
us a massive increase in performance. We have 
migrated most of our enterprise models into 
Gen2. This has enabled us to run in both dual 
mode with cache data in Power BI and direct 
query against Synapse. This means that we are 
getting snappy super-fast responsive times and 
are able to drill into the details within Synapse 
without us having to be running these super 
expensive, really large premium capacities.” 
• Data-informed decision-making. Interviewees 
described a gradual culture change going on, 
from frontline workers to managers to leadership, 
where there is great exposure to business data, 
more trust in data provided, and a means through 
Power BI dashboards to understand the data and 
to make better decisions. The BI analyst 
manager at the manufacturing and retail 
company said: “Retail outlets are looking at their 
labor, looking at their inventory, looking at their 
sales. All those sorts of metrics that help drive 
their store’s success.” 
“We originally targeted having 
2,000 Power BI users but exceeded 
that pretty quickly. Our second 
target was 5,000 users, then 10,000 
users. We are now at over 18,000 
users. We are in healthcare, so 
[protected health information] (PHI) 
protection is essential. In addition 
to governance within Power BI, we 
are analyzing Power BI log file data 
to understand how people are 
using the data.” 
Director of BI, healthcare 
“I can personally speak to our 
Power BI HR solution’s role in 
supporting our data-driven 
culture empowerment strategy. I 
am now looking at the data more 
frequently and find that it plays a 
greater role in decision-making.” 
Head of workforce analytics, 
telecommunications 
 
THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF MICROSOFT POWER BI 21 
ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS 
FLEXIBILITY 
The value of flexibility is unique to each customer. 
There are multiple scenarios in which a customer 
might implement Power BI and later realize additional 
uses and business opportunities, including: 
• Flexibility in device use and end-user 
organization. Interviewees shared that the 
Power BI platform allowed dashboard and report 
sharing across different devices, to internal users 
and external users, and within dashboards as 
well as integrated in applications. 
• The ability to make rapid changes to a 
changing world. The ease-of-use of Power BI, 
the empowerment that it provided to frontline 
workers, and the ability to build solutions quickly 
was of great value due to the COVID-19 
pandemic, the “Great Resignation,” and the 
worldwide supply-chain issues. The 
telecommunications head of workforce analytics 
shared: “We were able to create a COVID-19 
dashboard covering the 130 countries where we 
have employees. It supports leadership and 
individual employees. It supports local closure 
information, travel information, and even 
counselling services. We know who is on a 
business trip, where they are going, and how 
long that they will be traveling — all in Power BI.” 
Flexibility would also be quantified when evaluated as 
part of a specific project (described in more detail in 
Appendix A). 
 
 
“When [the COVID-19 pandemic 
began,] we were still in our 
infancy in using Power BI but we 
were still able to develop reports 
in days or hours that would have 
taken weeks historically. We had 
to produce analyses both related 
to our employees and our 
members. We were able to 
inform our highest executives 
about COVID-19 satisfactorily 
with Power BI.” 
Director of BI, healthcare 
“The [COVID-19] pandemic drove an 
increase in demand for our products, 
but our sales model had to change to 
reap that benefit. With the help of 
Power BI, we were able to quickly 
figure out what was going well and 
what was going poorly then adjust.” 
BI analyst manager, manufacturing and 
retail 
 
THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF MICROSOFT POWER BI 22 
Analysis Of Costs 
Quantified cost data as applied to the composite 
 
 
 
POWER BI LICENSING COST 
Evidence and data. Power BI licensing started with 
basic usage rights, known as Power BI Pro licensing, 
and expanded to Power BI Premium licensing. 
Microsoft’s E5 enterprise software licensing included 
Power BI Pro. The primary cost for production 
environments was Power BI Premium Capacity P1 
and P2 licensing. 
Modeling and assumptions. Forrester assumes the 
following for the composite organization: 
• The composite has 40,000 employees. Of that 
number, 25% become Power BI Pro users in 
Year 1 with adoption growing to 40% in Year 3. 
• The composite organization requires 12 P1 and 
P2 capacities in Year 1 with a 3:1 P1-to-P2 mix. 
Annual growth will be two capacities over the 
three years. 
• The client provides pricing for this mix of $75,000 
per year. 
Risks. Risks that could impact the realization of 
these costs include the following: 
• The assumed cost of the Pro licensing may vary 
due to the allocation assumptions related to E5 
being a packaged deal, and the percentage of 
employees under E5 licensing may vary. 
• The Premium capacity may vary. 
• The adoptionby end users as viewers, end users 
as self-service users, and developers may vary. 
Results. To account for these risks, Forrester 
adjusted this cost upward by 10%, yielding a three-
year, risk adjust total PV (discounted at 10%) of $7.1 
million. 
 
Total Costs 
Ref. Cost Initial Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Total Present Value 
Ftr Power BI licensing cost $0 $2,310,000 $2,897,400 $3,432,000 $8,639,400 $7,073,058 
Gtr 
Power BI central 
development team and 
center of excellence 
$900,000 $1,212,000 $1,476,000 $2,040,000 $5,628,000 $4,754,335 
 Total costs (risk-
adjusted) 
$900,000 $3,522,000 $4,373,400 $5,472,000 $14,267,400 $11,827,393 
 
“E5 licensing has a Power BI Pro 
license with it. That means that we 
can share Power BI freely 
internally as long as you’re not 
using Premium features. We 
leverage the Premium per user 
licenses for our dev and QA 
environments then push anything 
that’s in production into a Power 
BI Premium capacity licensing.” 
Analytics architect, manufacturing 
automation 
 
THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF MICROSOFT POWER BI 23 
ANALYSIS OF COSTS 
POWER BI CENTRAL DEVELOPMENT TEAM AND 
CENTER OF EXCELLENCE 
Evidence and data. In parallel to the retirement of 
the legacy reporting organizations, the interviewees 
shared that one or more Power BI development 
teams were staffed. In addition, some of the 
organizations also created a formal Power BI center 
of excellence (COE) to facilitate the adoption of 
Power BI for both end users and employees wishing 
to build their own dashboards. 
Modeling and assumptions. Forrester assumes the 
following for the composite organization: 
• The Power BI developers and COE require 
training to ramp up quickly and to meet 
expectations of doing best practices development 
and end-user support. Training for Year 1 is 
$50,000 and reduces to ongoing and new-hire 
training of $20,000 per year by Year 3. 
• An initial team of five developers is formed, 
including some outside contractors. The evolution 
of Power BI development teams and the Power 
BI COE starts Year 1 with eight developers and 
evolves to 14 developers by Year 3. 
• The average annual labor cost for the initial team 
is $150,000 while the average fully loaded labor 
cost of the development and COE teams is 
$120,000 per year. 
Risks. Risks that could impact the realization of 
these costs include the following: 
• The training costs will vary based upon team size 
and skill level of developers being trained. 
• The size of the COE and central report 
development team will vary based upon the 
approach on centralized reporting vs. 
democratization of reporting. 
• Labor costs will vary. 
Power BI Licensing Cost 
Ref. Metric Source Initial Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 
F1 Number of employees Composite 40,000 40,000 40,000 
F2 
Percentage of employees that are 
Power BI creators 
Composite 25% 33% 40% 
F3 Number of Power BI creators F1*F2 10,000 13,200 16,000 
F4 
Annual cost per nondeveloper Power 
BI user 
Assumption $120 $120 $120 
F5 
Subtotal: Power BI cost for 
employees using E5 Power Bi 
F3*F4 $1,200,000 $1,584,000 $1,920,000 
F6 
Premium P1 and P2 capacities 
needed to support total active users 
Assumption 12 14 16 
F7 
Average cost per capacity based 
upon estimated 3:1 P1-to-P2 mix 
Microsoft $75,000 $75,000 $75,000 
F8 
Subtotal: Cost for Power BI Premium 
P1 and P2 capacities 
F6*F7 $900,000 $1,050,000 $1,200,000 
Ft Power BI licensing cost F5+F8 $0 $2,100,000 $2,634,000 $3,120,000 
 Risk adjustment ↑10% 
Ftr 
Power BI licensing cost (risk-
adjusted) 
 $0 $2,310,000 $2,897,400 $3,432,000 
Three-year total: $8,639,400 Three-year present value: $7,073,058 
 
 
THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF MICROSOFT POWER BI 24 
ANALYSIS OF COSTS 
Results. To account for these risks, Forrester 
adjusted this cost upward by 20%, yielding a three-
year, risk-adjusted total PV of $4.8 million. 
 
 
 
 
 
Power BI Central Development Team And Center Of Excellence 
Ref. Metric Source Initial Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 
G1 Power BI training costs Interviews $50,000 $30,000 $20,000 
G2 
Power BI COE and central 
development team 
Composite 5 8 10 14 
G3 
Average fully loaded labor cost for 
Power BI COE and central 
development team 
Composite $150,000 $120,000 $120,000 $120,000 
Gt 
Power BI central development team 
and center of excellence 
G1+(G2*G3) $750,000 $1,010,000 $1,230,000 $1,700,000 
 Risk adjustment ↑20% 
Gtr 
Power BI central development team 
and center of excellence (risk-
adjusted) 
 $900,000 $1,212,000 $1,476,000 $2,040,000 
Three-year total: $5,628,000 Three-year present value: $4,754,335 
 
“An integrated goals dashboard is utilizing new AI features within 
Power BI, including narrations and decision trees, and not only is 
the solution a game changer but the cost of the project came in 
over a million dollars under budget and it was delivered over a 
year ahead of schedule.” 
Analytics architect, manufacturing automation 
 
THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF MICROSOFT POWER BI 25 
Financial Summary 
 
CONSOLIDATED THREE-YEAR RISK-ADJUSTED METRICS 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 -$10.0 M
$10.0 M
$20.0 M
$30.0 M
$40.0 M
$50.0 M
$60.0 M
Initial Year 1 Year 2 Year 3
C
a
s
h
fl
o
w
s
Cash Flow Chart (Risk-Adjusted)
Total costs Total benefits Cumulative net benefits
These risk-adjusted ROI, 
NPV, and payback period 
values are determined by 
applying risk-adjustment 
factors to the unadjusted 
results in each Benefit and 
Cost section. 
 
The financial results calculated in the 
Benefits and Costs sections can be 
used to determine the ROI, NPV, and 
payback period for the composite 
organization’s investment. Forrester 
assumes a yearly discount rate of 10% 
for this analysis. 
 
Cash Flow Analysis (Risk-Adjusted Estimates) 
 Initial Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Total 
Present 
Value 
Total costs ($900,000) ($3,522,000) ($4,373,400) ($5,472,000) ($14,267,400) ($11,827,393) 
Total benefits $0 $16,023,000 $24,945,500 $28,828,000 $69,796,500 $56,841,383 
Net benefits ($900,000) $12,501,000 $20,572,100 $23,356,000 $55,529,100 $45,013,990 
ROI 381% 
Payback period 
(months) 
or at the beginning of Year 1 that are not discounted. All 
other cash flows are discounted using the discount rate at the 
end of the year. PV calculations are calculated for each total 
cost and benefit estimate. NPV calculations in the summary 
tables are the sum of the initial investment and the 
discounted cash flows in each year. Sums and present value 
calculations of the Total Benefits, Total Costs, and Cash Flow 
tables may not exactly add up, as some rounding may occur. 
 
PRESENT VALUE (PV) 
The present or current value of 
(discounted) cost and benefit estimates 
given at an interest rate (the discount 
rate). The PV of costs and benefits feed 
into the total NPV of cash flows. 
 
NET PRESENT VALUE (NPV) 
The present or current value of 
(discounted) future net cash flows given 
an interest rate (the discount rate). A 
positive project NPV normally indicates 
that the investment should be made, 
unless other projects have higher NPVs. 
 
RETURN ON INVESTMENT (ROI) 
A project’s expected return in 
percentage terms. ROI is calculated by 
dividing net benefits (benefits less costs) 
by costs. 
 
DISCOUNT RATE 
The interest rate used in cash flow 
analysis to take into account the 
time value of money. Organizations 
typically use discount rates between 
8% and 16%. 
 
PAYBACK PERIOD 
The breakeven point for an investment. 
This is the point in time at which net 
benefits (benefits minus costs) equal 
initial investment or cost. 
 
THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF MICROSOFT POWER BI 27 
Appendix B: Endnotes 
 
1 Source: “The Forrester Wave: Augmented BI Platforms, Q3 2021,” Forrester Research, Inc., August 16, 2021. 
2 Total Economic Impact is a methodology developed by Forrester Research that enhances a company’s 
technology decision-making processes and assists vendors in communicating the value proposition of their 
products and services to clients. The TEI methodology helps companies demonstrate, justify, and realize the 
tangible value of IT initiatives to both senior management and other key business stakeholders. 
 
THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF MICROSOFT POWER BI 28