Analysis of the use of Business Intelligence technologies as facilitators of university management

Abstract

The concept of Business Intelligence (BI) approaches several technologies that aim at arranging the extraction and visualization of information, and just like in a competitive company the university management must also update itself, therefore adopting the use of processes that aid and speed decision making. Information Systems (IS) are indispensable elements and should mean more than the processing of routine activities, thereby starting to contribute to a strategic vision. The Western State University of Paraná (UNIOESTE) has many IS, but its users still face difficulties in extracting information in the desired format. Thus, this paper reports the outcomes of a research developed during the dissertation of a Master's Degree on Information Technology Management which is aimed at researching BI technologies. More specifically the Online Analytical Processing (OLAP), as well as implementing an operation prototype that could facilitate the retrieval of information from the dean’s office for planning, whose sources are many UNIOESTE information systems. In order to reach that goal, an exploratory/descriptive research of the qualitative type was developed by means of a documentary and bibliographical research. A prototype with the Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) tool, which is a component of Microsoft SQL Server 2008, here integrated with Excel 2010 spreadsheet editor for end-user interface, was developed and evaluated. As part of the evaluation system, the SUS questionnaire was used to measure user satisfaction, where the average score given by participants was 91.5 on a 0 to 100 scale, which means quite a positive evaluation.