Business Intelligence is No ‘Free Lunch’: What We Already Know About Cost Allocation – and What We Should Find Out

Cost allocations for business intelligence (BI) costs create cost awareness, enhance cost transparency, and support the management of BI systems. Although BI cost allocation is highly relevant in practice, the field is widely uncharted in current scholarly research. In this article, the state of the art in scientific literature is analyzed. The review is comprised of three iterations. It shows that certain general approaches for information systems cost allocation are suitable candidates if being combined and tailored to BI systems. Based on synthesis, an agenda is derived for future research into cost allocation for BI systems.