Towards an Understanding of Business Intelligence

Given the wide recognition of business intelligence (BI) over the last 20 years, we performed a literature review on the concept from a managerial perspective. We analysed 103 articles related to BI in the period 1990 to 2010. We found that BI is defined as a process, a product, and as a set of technologies, or a combination of these, which involves data, information, knowledge, decision making, related processes and technologies that support them. Our findings show that the literature focuses mostly on data and information, and less on knowledge and decision making. Moreover, in relation to the processes there is a substantial amount of literature about gathering and storing data and information, but less about analysing and using information and knowledge, and almost nothing about acting (making decisions) based on intelligence. The research literature has mainly focused on technologies and neglecting the role of the decision maker. We conclude by synthesizing a unified definition of BI and identifying possible future research streams

Business Intelligence in NHS WALES

The paper investigates the challenges of implementing Business Intelligence (BI) in NHS Wales. The study is informed by extant literature, a modified Delphi approach that draws on the knowledge of ten expert panelists from the NHS/Welsh public sector, and from the extensive industry experience of one of the authors of this study. Our adapted Delphi methodology lends itself to supporting the nature of this research since it not only structures a group communication process to explore and seek consensus on specific aspects of BI implementation in NHS Wales, but it also identifies the mean priority accorded by our expert panel to approximately eighty BI-related questions. The specific findings are presented under the following six headings – tools, resources, data, business drivers, business process needs and business service needs. The findings, in general, highlight that the existing BI services in NHS Wales are not presently supporting the delivery of evidence-based business decisions

Desenvolvimento de software como ferramenta baseada em business intelligence para análise de resultados / Development of a tool based on business intelligence for results analysis

Os sistemas de software, tecnologias e metodologias que realizam análise de dados, constituem o domínio de inteligência de negócios ou Business Intelligence (BI), que é definido como um conjunto de estratégias que envolvem a captura e a análise de dados para processos de tomada de decisão. Dessa forma, busca-se criar um ambiente em que a empresa tenha mais facilidade para encontrar, avaliar, colaborar, compreender e agir a partir de informações de alto valor. O BI aumenta o conhecimento dos funcionários acerca da empresa, permitindo a divulgação dos processos, a coleta de feedback e a captura de dados organizacionais é apresentada aos tomadores de decisão de forma harmonizada. Este trabalho aborda o estudo de BI para a construção de uma ferramenta para auxiliar na análise dos dados em uma fábrica de dispositivos móveis em seu processo de controle de retorno de aparelhos por conta de devoluções. A metodologia utilizada neste trabalho foi um estudo exploratório para coleta dos requisitos para construção da ferramenta, na qual foi desenvolvida e apresentada para a equipe técnica da fábrica. A ferramenta teve uma boa aceitação de seus usuários e atende as necessidades principais para análise do processo. Além disso, para que a ferramenta fique mais abrangente foram acrescentadas novas funcionalidades para que o sistema proporcione maturidade para tomadas de decisões e que contribuam para o processo e as suas estratégias de médio e longo prazo.

Recovering the divide : a review of the big data analytics—strategy relationship

Research on big data analytics has been burgeoning in recent decades, yet its relationship with strategy continues to be overlooked. This paper reviews how big data analytics and strategy are portrayed across 228 articles, identifying two dominant discourses: an input-output discourse that views big data analytics as a computational capability supplementing prospective strategy formulation and an entanglement discourse that theorizes big data analytics as a socially constructed agent that (re)shapes the emergent character of strategy formation. We deconstruct the inherent dichotomies of the input-output/entanglement divide and reveal how both discourses adopt disjointed positions vis-à-vis relational causality and agency. We elaborate a semiotic view of big data analytics and strategy that transcends this standoff and provides a novel theoretical account for conjoined relationality between big data analytics and strategy

Proceedings of the Fifth Mediterranean Conference on Information Systems: Professional Development Consortium

Collection of position statements of doctoral students and junior faculty in the Professional Development Consortium at the the Fifth Mediterranean Conference on Information Systems, Tel Aviv - Yafo

Facteurs d’influence de la maturité en intelligence d’affaires des entreprises dans les pays émergents : Le cas de la Tunisie

Ce travail cherche à mieux cerner la maturité de l’intelligence d’affaires (BI) des entreprises dans les pays en voie de développement. Notre sujet se limite tout particulièrement aux pays considéré comme étant dans un processus d’émergence en prenant comme exemple la Tunisie. L’intérêt de traiter de ce sujet sous ce prisme particulier est de comprendre quels sont les impacts des caractéristiques propres à ce type de pays (leur niveau d’informatisation, leur gestion, leurs politiques nationales, leur ouverture sur le monde, etc.) dans les projets de développement d’une BI. Dans cette étude, nous essayons de répondre à deux questions de recherches principales : 1) Comment peut-on caractériser la maturité de la BI dans les pays émergents ? et 2) Quels sont les principaux facteurs d’influence sur la maturité de la BI dans les entreprises tunisiennes ? Afin de répondre à nos questions de recherche, nous avons adopté une méthode de recherche qualitative basée sur l’entrevue. Nous avons réalisé 11 entrevues en profondeur avec autant de dirigeants ou de cadre supérieurs d’entreprises tunisiennes. Nous avons d’abord fait une évaluation du niveau de maturité de l’entreprise à l’aide du modèle de maturité d’intelligence d’affaires proposé par Eckerson (2011). Dans un deuxième temps, nous avons identifié les facteurs qui jouent un rôle facilitateur ou inhibiteur de la maturité BI de l’entreprise. Un guide d’entretien a été utilisé. Les données ont été analysées suivant une méthode de codage ouvert et d’une comparaison inter cas. Nos résultats montrent que les entreprises participantes présentaient globalement un profil de maturité du niveau « adolescence ». Trois facteurs principaux semblent associés positivement à une amélioration de la maturité BI, deux sont plutôt neutres, et 4 semblent nuire à la progression de l’entreprise. Cette étude nous permet en plus de comprendre qu’il existe des facteurs particuliers pouvant influencer l’avancement de la BI et son utilisation. De plus cette recherche nous éclaire sur la compréhension de la BI dans les pays émergeants, qui cherchent à améliorer leur compétitivité sur le marché mondial

The Role of Business Intelligence in Organizational Decision-making

This Ph.D. thesis is concerned with the role of the business intelligence (BI) output in organizational decision-making processes. The primary focus of this thesis is to investigate how this BI output is employed and deployed by decision-makers to shape collective judgement and to reach organizational decisions. Concerning the role of the BI output in decision-making the BI literature is characterized by normative ideas of how the BI output should be used in decision-making and how it can enable people to make better decisions. Most previous work has concerned methods and technologies to collect, store and analyze BI. It has also, assumed a rational approach to decision making where data from information systems are used to inform decisions either by reducing uncertainty, ambiguity or complexity. This study attempts to establish knowledge about the role of the BI output in the IT project prioritization process of the Group IT of the Danske Bank Group. Hence, the starting point of this thesis is a 16-month long interpretive study from March 2010 till July 2011 during which I observed the prioritization process and collected various forms of data. I use a rich dataset built from this longitudinal study of the IT project prioritization process in Group IT where thematic analysis is used to analyze the data. Overall, the study operates under the interpretive paradigm, which assumes that the world and knowledge are socially constructed

Exploring the Impact of Business Intelligence (BI) Use on Organisational Power Dynamics: A National Health Service (NHS) Case Study

The public sector, particularly healthcare organisations are under ever increasing pressure to do more with less. This coupled with the need to keep up to the constant technological changes and ever increasing abundance of information has led to many public sector organisations adopting Business Intelligence (BI) in order to leverage business value and improve decision-making. However, many organisations such as the National Health Service (NHS) continue to fail in their Information Technology (IT) related initiatives. While the rise of BI and its growing influence in organisations has attracted much academic attention, this has largely been from architectural, design and technological perspectives, whilst little is known about how BI is used by various organisational actors to reach decisions, nor much is understood regarding its resulting impact on organisational power dynamics. Thus, there remains an under researched area of discussion in the literature from the perspective of BI users. While studies report how BI can impact organisational effectiveness, facilitate data driven decision making and supposedly overcome intuitive decision making, the extent to which BI impacts and alters power dynamics between organisational actors across the organisation has received little attention. Accordingly, this research adopts a qualitative case study approach to explore power resulting from BI use within a large NHS trust by conducting 30 semi-structured interviews consisting of operational managers and BI analysts. Through taking a human-centric approach, this research uncovers how BI is altering power dynamics between organisational actors, whereby BI analysts are becoming increasingly influential as a result of their analytical skills. It was found that operational managers are becoming more reliant upon data analysts, resulting in the analysts having more and more influence. However, this research finds it is only when the analysts supplement their technical skill-set with their institutional knowledge, that they have the ability to influence and enact power within the organisational settings. The research also offers insights into the contestations and conflicts which arise from the use of BI, between operational managers and analysts as well as between in-house analysts, based in the operation setting and the centralised analysts, operating across the entire trust. Accordingly, this research empirically validates a BI Power Enactment Framework and proposes the BI Power Matrix, which may assist policy makers in identifying determining key factors which are contributory to the success or failure of technological initiatives