Enhancing the Business Value of Business Intelligence: The Role of Shared Knowledge and Assimilation

Abstract

Business intelligence (BI) systems have attracted significant interest from senior executives and consultants for their ability to exploit organizational data and provide operational and strategic benefits through improved management control systems. A large body of literature indicates that organizations have largely failed to use their business intelligence investments effectively to exploit the wealth of data they capture in their ERP systems. As a result, BI has too often failed to support organizations' managerial decision making at both the strategic and operational levels and, thus, failed to enhance business value. Whether and how organizations achieve business benefits from their BI investments remains unclear. This study draws on the strategic alignment and IT assimilation literature to develop a research model that theorizes the importance of BI systems assimilation, and the need for shared knowledge among the strategic and operational levels as the drivers of BI business value. Results from the study confirm the crucial role of BI assimilation in translating organizational resources into capabilities that enhance the business value of BI. The findings also contribute evidence on the importance of shared domain knowledge and the interrelations between senior business, IT executives, and operational-level managers for enhancing BI assimilation.

Barriers to Predictive Analytics Use for Policy Decision-Making Effectiveness in Turbulent Times: A Case Study of Fukushima Nuclear Accident

“…BI systems use analytics and enterprise system databases. As a result, BI systems failed to support managerial decision making at both the strategic and operational levels, and hence failing to create business value through BI investments [17,18]. This empirical study found evidence for the importance of BI systems assimilation and the need for shared domain knowledge at the strategic and operational levels as the drivers of BI business value.…”

The role of a predictive analytics project initiator in the integration of financial and operational forecasts

“…Accordingly, we suggest that under certain situations, a single integrated data structure may be beneficial, whereas in other situations it is not necessarily appropriate (c.f. Balkan and Goul, 2010;Elbashir et al 2013). Specifically, if the company has a day-to-day need to update forecasts for production planning purposes and focuses on forecasting non-monetary figures, then integration is perhaps unjustified from a cost-benefit point of view.…”

“…Generally, it can be argued that BI systems have emerged to solve the problem of providing flexibility of use while ensuring the integration of data. In fact, Elbashir et al (2013) argue that BI systems only create value for business when they are integrated effectively with data warehouses of organisations. Further, they suggest that, ideally the BI system should be configured to provide analysis and reporting that can then be effectively used both in decision-making and managerial control.…”

Defining the ERP and CRM Integrative Value

“…Firm size is used as a proxy for the resource base of the organization that may influence the integrative value and firm performance [45]. Time since both systems where integrated was included to measure the knowledge and experience that organizations obtain from working overtime [45].…”