College of Economic and Management Sciences (UNISA)
Abstract
Business intelligence (BI) plays a critical role in providing actionableintelligence to enable good business decision-making. Internationalresearch shows clear evidence of the benefi ts of implementing soundBI practices. However, within a South African business context, anunderstanding of the practice, impact and benefi ts of BI is only partlyaddressed by existing research. Consequently, this article presentsthe most salient fi ndings of a recent BI study, which was one of thefew such studies that have been conducted in South Africa in the21st century. Although the discussion refl ects fairly high generalsatisfaction levels with BI among South African businesses, someproblems related especially to external BI dimensions are highlighted.An equally important and major concern raised by the article is theapparent lack of companies capitalising on BI opportunities andcoordinating BI functions eff ectively. Of concern at the generalmanagement level, in particular, are the low satisfaction levels withBI quality, as well as various aspects of BI collection, analysis anddissemination. Despite the fact that businesses use BI functions andplanning support software, the survey fi ndings reveal insuffi cientinvestment in sophisticated BI analysis tools
