An evaluation of business intelligence tools: a cluster analysis of users’ perceptions

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to discuss and evaluate the use of businessintelligence (BI) tools by professionals and students to help designers of these tools get the mostefficiency out of a monitoring process. This paper explores the business and competitiveintelligence literature. BI is considered to be a new area in information systems, so literatureresearch was conducted in the area of management information systems (MIS) with twoevaluation models: task-technology fit and technology acceptance to evaluate BI tools. Aquestionnaire was sent to users of business intelligence tools addressed to French companies indifferent trades and engineering students and the most pertinent replies were examined. Theresponses were analyzed using the statistical software SPAD. Results showed a typology fromthe various profiles of users of this technology using the method of classification. We notedifferent perceptions between professional and student users (the clients). Although this studyremains focused on individual perspective, it requires more examination of the organizationalimpact of the use of BI tools. The identification of the different user profiles was done by usinga cluster analysis. For the designers of BI tools these results highlight the importance of userperception, suggesting designers take into account the perception of all user types. As thesetools develop, more and more companies will be looking for skills for monitoring andmanagement of strategic information.