Business Intelligence: Transforming Intelligence into Actions

Business Intelligence (BI) is a topic that has attracted attention from both researchers and practitioners. Despite BI's promising possibilities, few organizations are able to transform BI-insights into actions. Thus, the purpose of this study was to understand: How organizations can transform BI insights into actions, and which capabilities impact this transformation. In order to obtain this understanding, a case-study was conducted. We interviewed six consultants from leading consultancy firms, and a practitioner who uses BI on a daily basis. Prior to this, the authors reviewed previous BI literature which suggests that BI needs to be combined with capabilities for employees to utilize BI. Microfoundations was used as a theoretical framework to identify important capabilities and how they relate to BI. The findings distinguished specific capabilities that impacts the ability to utilize BI. Capabilities such as communication, sponsorship, culture, and clear strategies & goals, are important in order to better take advantage of BI. The conclusions are that hard skills (e.g. technical competencies), education and experience among the employees may not be as crucial as previously thought. This is because BI-systems are becoming more intuitive and easier to use