Investigating Business Intelligence (BI) Solution Adoption in Australian Companies: An ERP Perspective

The global Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems industry blossomed in the 1990’s automating back office operations. Although these systems have become essential infrastructure for many companies, it is now critical that these transaction based systems are extended to support more strategic and complex decisions. The demand for more effective decision making tools has seen the move away from Decision Support Systems to more complex solutions. Accordingly ERP vendors have developed a range of solutions focussing on business intelligence (BI) in various functional areas. However the question must now be asked, “What is the status of BI solution integration in Australian companies and what is the nature of the adoption and use of these various solutions”? This paper adopts a two pronged research methodology. The first methodology involved a web based survey to identify BI implementation patterns. This was then expanded upon using a case study approach. The research identified an evolutionary maturity to the way in which BI solutions are adopted in Australian companies