Business Intelligence and Business Value in Organisations: A Systematic Literature Review

Dignity Paradza,Olawande Daramola

doi:10.3390/su132011382

Abstract

Organisations must derive adequate business value (BV) from Business Intelligence (BI) adoption to retain their profitability and long-term sustainability. Yet, the nuances that define the realisation of BV from BI are still not understood by many organisations that have adopted BI. This paper aims to foster a deeper understanding of the relationship between Business Intelligence (BI) and business value (BV) by focusing on the theories that have been used, the critical factors of BV derivation, the inhibitors of BV, and the different forms of BV. To do this, a systematic literature review (SLR) methodology was adopted. Articles were retrieved from three scholarly databases, namely Google Scholar, Scopus, and Science Direct, based on relevant search strings. Inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied to select ninety-three (93) papers as the primary studies. We found that the most used theoretical frameworks in studies on BI and BV are the Resource-Based View (RBV), Dynamic Capabilities Theory (DCT), Technology-Organisation-Environment (TOE), and Contingency Theory (CON). The most acknowledged critical factors of BV are skilled human capital, BI Infrastructure, data quality, BI application and usage/data culture, BI alignment with organisational goals, and top management support. The most acclaimed inhibitors of BV are data quality and handling, data security and protection, lack of BI Infrastructure, and lack of skilled human resource capital, while customer intelligence is the most acknowledged form of BV. So far, many theories that are relevant to BI and BV, critical factors, inhibitors, and forms of BV were marginally mentioned in the literature, requiring more investigations. The study reveals opportunities for future research that can be explored to gain a deeper understanding of the issues of BV derivation from BI. It also offers useful insights for adopters of BI, BI researchers, and BI practitioners.

Highlights

Business Intelligence (BI) is heavily documented in the literature as a tool capable of aiding business progression through better decision-making processes and subsequently firm performance and business value (BV) [1,2]
We found that the commonly adopted theories consist of the popular perspectives of Resource-Based
While many critical factors of BV derivation from BI have been identified, some of them such as clear organisational goals, procedural practices, BI adoption process, competitive pressure, perceived benefits, organisational readiness, BI investment, planning, organising, and the latency effect require more investigation to determine their effect on the derivation of BV from BI

Summary

Introduction

Business Intelligence (BI) is heavily documented in the literature as a tool capable of aiding business progression through better decision-making processes and subsequently firm performance and business value (BV) [1,2]. BI enables the crunching and analysis of immense volumes of organisational data to generate strategic information. This is conducted through identifying variable correlations and discovering patterns that are capable of providing enlightened organisational decisions which can vastly improve organisational strategic decision making [4,5]. Both practitioners and researchers alike show interest in BI as it has become synonymous with firm performance, at least in theory [1,4,6]. The latest term that evolved from BI and BA is Big Data or Big Data Analytics which represents larger volumes and complex sets of data requiring dedicated tools to synthesise information while still upholding the same emphasis on reporting and predictive analytics [28]

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