$1,000 to generate a business report? That's how much a single Tableau license is going to cost you. You still need to train up the staff member to know how to use it (yes, it's probably the most intuitive BI tool on the market, but like anything it has a learning curve).
1,000 USD/yr for a license.. If you pay someone 100 USD/hr to do the work compared to 50 USD/hr for a random Joe Blow analyst then it only needs to save 20 hours of time.
ITT: A lot of people who don't realize 1k a year isn't an absurd enterprise price.
Also to clarify, the licence is $1000 for the first purchase. Subsequently, you only have to pay the maintenance fees of about usd 200 per year to remain eligible for support and upgrades. You can still continue using the latest version you were on in perpetuity.
That's a lot of money for a business report.