Assessment of Managerial Information Needs as a Basis for Business Intelligence Development
Aura, Topi (2016)
2016
Tietojohtamisen koulutusohjelma
Talouden ja rakentamisen tiedekunta - Faculty of Business and Built Environment
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Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2016-06-08
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tty-201605264171
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tty-201605264171
Tiivistelmä
Performance is an important measure for all organizations as it describes how well an organization reaches its goals. An organization’s performance can be improved with better-informed and more accurate managerial activities such as decision-making. Business intelligence (BI) is in a central position in supporting these activities. The BI process begins with the identification of information needs, which is the most important step as it guides the whole process. Performance information needs are dependent on the decision-makers’ roles and tasks as well as contextual and multiple other factors.
This study is conducted for a Finnish company which will be referred to as the target organization. The target organization is a professional service company providing IT and business consulting services. This study examines the team managers’ performance information needs and the target organization’s capabilities in meeting these needs. The requirements for future BI development will be identified based on the collected data. The research strategy in this study derives from a case study perspective, and the used data collection methods are focus group discussions and semi-structured interviews.
The information need assessment was conducted with the help of a business performance management framework developed as a part of this study. The study indicated that from the six performance perspectives acknowledged in this framework, the target organization’s BI is mostly focused on the perspectives of finance, customer and internal process. At the same time, especially the information needs regarding the perspectives of environment, learning and growth and people are inadequately satisfied.
The results suggest that the target organization’s BI is in an early stage of its maturity. As a conclusion, this study recommends the target organization’s BI operations and capabilities to be developed in two steps. In the first step, the focus of the development should be on satisfying the basic information needs identified in this study. In the second step, new BI capabilities, such as data warehousing, are introduced, so that the team managers’ future needs for performance information can be satisfied.
This study is conducted for a Finnish company which will be referred to as the target organization. The target organization is a professional service company providing IT and business consulting services. This study examines the team managers’ performance information needs and the target organization’s capabilities in meeting these needs. The requirements for future BI development will be identified based on the collected data. The research strategy in this study derives from a case study perspective, and the used data collection methods are focus group discussions and semi-structured interviews.
The information need assessment was conducted with the help of a business performance management framework developed as a part of this study. The study indicated that from the six performance perspectives acknowledged in this framework, the target organization’s BI is mostly focused on the perspectives of finance, customer and internal process. At the same time, especially the information needs regarding the perspectives of environment, learning and growth and people are inadequately satisfied.
The results suggest that the target organization’s BI is in an early stage of its maturity. As a conclusion, this study recommends the target organization’s BI operations and capabilities to be developed in two steps. In the first step, the focus of the development should be on satisfying the basic information needs identified in this study. In the second step, new BI capabilities, such as data warehousing, are introduced, so that the team managers’ future needs for performance information can be satisfied.