A Proposal for Business Intelligence Solution Based on Systems Integration and Enhanced Reporting Functionality

This study builds up a proposal for a Business Intelligence Solution for the case company. The company has an existing solution that could be used for this purpose but it is used only for the external customers. The internal customers claim that the existing solution may not be the right tool for the Business Intelligence reporting so it was necessary to research the current situation and find possible alternative solutions. Furthermore, the operational infrastructure that is creating the data to be used by the Business Intelligence Solution is under integration development which is greatly affecting the outcome of the proposal. The objective of this study is to build a proposal to choose between the existing solution and an alternative solution. Action research was the chosen method for this study. The business challenge was identified with the company stakeholders and the current state of the reporting, operational infrastructure and their developability was analyzed and summarized. The data for the analysis was gathered from the stakeholder interviews and company’s documentation. The literature summary for the proposal was studied through Business Intelligence overview and best practices alongside with infrastructure requirements for them. The current state analysis and the literature summary was the basis for the proposal after the testing phase was completed. Testing was done with the existing solution and two alternative solutions that were selected based on the company requirements and best practices. Testing of the solutions was done with the stakeholders and the summary of the solutions was used to select the alternative solution to compete against the existing solution. The initial proposal was then built and reviewed by the company and adjusted to better reflect the company needs and to reduce risks. The outcome of this Thesis was a final proposal for the company to choose between the existing solution and an alternative solution. The proposal included details from both solutions about pricing, implementation cost, support and maintenance functions, usability, overall performance and potential according to company needs