Mastering Business Intelligence Complexity - A Service-Based Approach as a Prerequisite for BI Governance

Integrated approaches to management support – Business Intelligence (BI) – have become widespread. The respective solutions have evolved to highly integrated, complex solutions that cannot be treated as sequences of isolated projects anymore and require central coordination and regulation. As a consequence, companies have begun to implement BI governance structures. However, these initiatives face the challenge that there is still a lack of insight into how to capture and track the underlying service landscape. Based on a framework for service delineation, two case studies are analyzed and discussed. As a result, a service oriented concept for supporting BI governance is derived. It complements the framework with aspects of solution composition and decomposition as well as for lifecycle management and thereby enables a holistic perspective in BI governance approaches

An Integrated ERP with Web Portal

Abstract Making the right decision at the right time requires that the data should be available at internet time not after the event when it is too late to do anything. So the need for a web portal has been increased in order to support decision making in the different organizational levels at internet time by providing features such as, customization, personalization, support for collaboration and notification that support managers in making the right decision at internet time. All this can be achieved by applying the (BI) tools on " One version" data store that contains data from legacy ERP system after applying the ETL tools over it. Also the Data marts will be used in order to shorten the response time of queries generated by the users

Business Intelligence & Analytics Cost Accounting: A Survey on the Perceptions of Stakeholders

As data driven decision-making using business intelligence and analytics (BI&A) becomes standard in companies, the importance of mitigating the accompanying growth in costs increases. Research shows that increasing transparency to the granularity of individual BI&A artefacts such as reports or analytic applications is a necessary means, but in practice the introduction of said systems is cumbersome and adoption is slow. We address the status quo of BI&A cost accounting for three types of stakeholders: users, developers and managers. The results show in which areas of application a strong need for action exists and we identify major challenges for further research are ahead. Our findings indicate for example that managers at the same time regard cost accounting for BI&A with a higher potential benefit while they also believe they have already established a higher degree of implementation in their enterprises compared to the other stakeholder types. We conclude that BI&A professionals have to consider these different perceptions to run a successful department and gain traction for BI&A cost accounting

Business Intelligence in the Cloud?

Business Intelligence (BI) deals with integrated approaches to management support. In many cases, the integrated infrastructures that are subject to BI have become complex, costly, and inflexible. A possible remedy for these issues might arise on the horizon with “Cloud Computing” concepts that promise new options for a net based sourcing of hard- and software. Currently, there is still a dearth of concepts for defining, designing, and structuring a possible adaption of Cloud Computing to the domain of BI. This contribution combines results from the outsourcing and the BI literature and derives a framework for delineating “Cloud BI” approaches. This is the bases for the discussion of six possible scenarios – some of which within immediate reach today

The ICT convergence discourse in the information systems literature - A second-order observation

The growing relevance, scale, and complexity of Business Intelligence (BI) entails the need to find agile and efficient solutions for the coordination of maintenance and release processes – under consideration of the heterogeneity of the involved units on the IT and the business side. The finance industry with its mature BI infrastructures and its highly turbulent business environment is a forerunner for these developments. Based on a survey among BI users in the finance sector, relevant problem areas in the BI service provision are identified and structured. A series of qualitative interviews among banks and insurance companies is used to gain further insights into approaches for dealing with the related issues. The studies uncover several advantages of a central “BI Competency Centre” (BICC) as well as levers for effectively structuring the interfaces between BICC, IT, and user interface

Service-oriented Cost Allocation for Business Intelligence and Analytics: Who pays for BI&A?

Quantifying and designing the cost pool generated by Business Intelligence and Analytics (BI&A) would improve cost transparency and invoicing processes, allowing a fairer, more exact allocation of costs to service consumers. Yet there is still no method for determining BI&A costs to provide a base for allocation purposes. While literature describes several methods for BI&A cost estimation on an ROI or resource-consumption level, none of these methods considers an overall approach for BI&A. To tackle this problem, we propose a service-oriented cost allocation model which calculates BI&A applications based on defined services, enabling a cost transfer to service consumers. This new approach specifies steps towards deriving a usable pricing scheme for an entire BI&A service portfolio – both for allocation purposes as well as improving cost evaluation of BI&A projects. Moreover, it prevents BI&A departments from being considered as the sole cost driver, increasing customer understanding and cost awareness

Eliciting And Connecting Information Requirements: A Study Of Brokering Situations In Data Warehouse Development

Information management and logistics rely on underlying data warehouse (DWH) systems. The development of DWHs brings together different communities of practice. In this paper, we concentrate on the role of DWH professionals as a brokering community in DWH development projects. We argue that each time they engage in brokering activities towards neighboring communities of practice, representatives from these communities take brokering roles as well. As a result, a so-called brokering situation resides within the social structure, which builds a brokering community. To closer observe the roles of DWH professionals within these brokering situations, we conducted in-depth interviews with experienced DWH professionals. Based on the analysis, we argue that the selection of the community’s representatives with experience in neighboring communities can improve brokering situations. Objects exchanged between communities of practice during brokering situations can have either positive or negative effects, depending on their capacity and the type of complexity on the boundary

Understanding Continuous Use of Business Intelligence Systems: A Mixed Methods Investigation

Business intelligence (BI) systems play an important role in organizations’ decision-making processes. The existing literature has long focused on the continuous use of information systems (IS). However, the specificities of BI systems such as voluntary use, long-term return of investments, heterogeneity of their use cases, and innovative rather than routine use in such systems motivate our investigating continuous use in the specific context of BI systems. To theorize continuous use of BI systems, we investigate the influencing factors and their interactions. By means of an exploratory and confirmatory mixed-methods research design that comprises a literature review, a single-case study, and a survey, we integrate the identified factors and hypothesize their influence on the continuous use of BI systems in a research model. We test the research model following a partial least squares (PLS) approach to structural equation modeling (SEM). The paper makes two primary contributions: 1) it confirms certain well-established constructs and relations in the specific context of BI systems, which are generally theorized for the continuous use of IS, and 2) it introduces either new constructs or new relations through the given investigation in the context of BI systems. Future studies can test these new constructs and relations as potential input for theorizing general IS continuous use

A decision-making framework for aligning business analytics with business objectives

Throughout this thesis, we discuss the impact of Business Analytics on the organizational decision-making process with the objective of designing a framework that provides the organization with extra-knowledge on how to implement and sustain their analytics. First, we develop the concept of capability using the resource-based view and the IT literature to define what is a Business Analytics capability. We then define the key capabilities that provide the organization with a competitive advantage. Moreover, we investigate the role of governance and alignment as well as the impact of the concepts on the decision making effectiveness. To provide an insight on the adjustment to be made in order to increase the organization Business Analytics performance, we emphasise the role of alignment between Information Technology governance, corporate governance, data governance and Business Analytics governance. Thereafter we create the framework based on academic and empirical research and apply this framework throughout a case study. Based on this case study we provide an academic recommendation to the investigated organization. This thesis highlights the importance of the creation of a Business Analytics governance. Also, the research provides a framework linking Business Analytics with decision making successfulness

Business Intelligence - ur ett Governance perspektiv

Business Intelligence (BI) är ett ämne som är högst aktuellt inom verksamheter idag. Detta eftersom BI möjliggör stöd för beslutstaganden inom verksamheter vilket leder till bättre effektivitet samt snabbare svar på affärsfrågor. För att hanteringen av ett BI-initiativ ska lyckas har vi i denna studie sett att det är viktigt att ha en tydligt Governance-strategi. Vi kan dra slutsatsen att BI Governance är ett begrepp som är i sin begynnelse då tidigare forskning är begränsad. Samtidigt kan vi se att BI Governance är en kritisk framgångsfaktor för att lyckas med ett BI-initiativ. Vi har därför valt att identifiera fyra områden som ämnar bringa klarhet kring begreppet. Dessa fyra områden är definitioner, ramverk, harmonisering och integration samt utmaningar. En kvalitativ studie där fyra semistruktuerade intervjuer med både leverantörer samt verksamheter har genomförts. Resultatet visar att det idag inte finns något etablerat ramverk för BI Governance samt att BI Governance inte bör förknippas med IT Governance. Istället bör BI Governance ses som en operativ fråga mer än en IT-fråga, vilket motsäger sig tidigare forskning. Studien belyser även att begreppen harmonisering samt integration kan användas för att identifiera rätt typ av Governance för ett BI-initiativ. Slutligen belyser studien begreppet Change Management som ses som den största utmaningen vid styrning av ett BI-initiativ