How companies work and fail to work with business intelligence

Abstract

Most papers in this issue deal with different sides of business intelligence systems. Empirical data froma number of countries and companies are gathered to illustrate how companies work and fail to workwith competitive intelligence.The paper by Alnoukari and Hanano, entitled “Integration of business intelligence with corporatestrategic management,” deals with the relationships between business intelligence and strategicmanagement. The paper proposes a BSC-BI framework that facilitates the integration of businessintelligence with the balanced scorecard methodology using an example of a case from the telecomindustry.The paper by Jürgens, “Patent bibliometrics and its use for technology watch,” is on the topic oftechnology watch and statistical analysis of patent information and proposes patent indicators fortechnology watch activities, which are classified into four categories: performance, technology, patentvalue and collaboration indicators. The case of nanotechnology for a whole country is applied asexample.The paper by Søilen, “Why care about competitive intelligence and market intelligence? The case ofEricsson and Swedish Cellulose Company (SCA),” tries to answer that question with an example of twoSwedish companies. The history of the intelligence function in private companies is compared to that ofstate and military organizations. The most interesting question turns out to be why more companiesdon't pay attention to CI and MI when so many arguments speak to their advantages.The paper by Gauzelin and Benz is entitled “An examination of the impact of business intelligencesystems on organizational decision making and performance: The case of France”. This empirical studyexamines the impact of business intelligence systems on organizational decision-making andperformance. They found that when BI systems are deployed in SMEs, they facilitate timely decisionmaking, improve organizational efficiency, enable a company to meet client’s needs appropriately andlead to more satisfied employees.The paper by Langlois and Chauvel is entitled “The impact of supply chain management on businessintelligence”. The authors argue for why it makes sense to see the BI function as an extension of supplychain management, but moreover they show how difficult it has become to separate BI from other ITintensive processes in the organization.As always, we would above all like to thank the authors for their contributions to this issue of JISIB.Thanks to Dr. Allison Perrigo for reviewing English grammar and helping with layout design for allarticles and to the Swedish Research Council for continuous financial support.