Search results

Higher education institutions (HEIs) face a number of challenges in effectively managing and reporting on sustainability information, such as siloes of data and a limited distribution of information. Business intelligence (BI) can assist in addressing the challenges faced by organisations. The purpose of this study was to propose a BI framework for strategic sustainability information management (the Sustainable BI Framework) that can be used in HEIs.

The research applied the design science research methodology whilst using a South African HEI as a case study. The problems with sustainability information management were identified, and a theoretical framework was proposed. In addition, a practical BI software tool was developed as proof of concept to address these problems and to assist with the management of strategic sustainability information in an HEI.

The proposed sustainability BI tool was evaluated through heuristic and usability evaluations with senior management. The results indicated that the usability of the BI tool was positively rated and that the framework can assist in overcoming the constraints that HEIs face in effectively managing sustainability information.

The research was limited to a single case. However, the theoretical framework was derived from and expanded on existing stakeholder theory, sustainability reporting theory and literature on BI dashboard development. The framework was implemented successfully in the Sustainable BI Tool prototype at the case study, and the results reveal in-depth information regarding information management for sustainability reporting in higher education.

The Sustainable BI Tool is a solution that integrates data from multiple areas of sustainability and provides a single integrated view of the information to stakeholders. The information is provided through performance dashboards, which provide predictive capabilities to enable management to report on sustainability and determine if the institution is meeting its strategic goals. The lessons learnt can also assist other HEIs considering implementing BI for sustainability reporting.

Improved sustainability reporting for HEIs provided by the BI framework can improve the environmental and social impact of the educational community.

This study provides the most comprehensive framework for guiding the design of a BI tool to assist in effectively managing sustainability information in HEIs.

The strategic management literature emphasizes the concept of business intelligence (BI) as an essential competitive tool. Yet the sustainability of the firms’ competitive advantage provided by BI capability is not well researched. To fill this gap, this study attempts to develop a model for successful BI deployment and empirically examines the association between BI deployment and sustainable competitive advantage. Taking the telecommunications industry in Malaysia as a case example, the research particularly focuses on the influencing perceptions held by telecommunications decision makers and executives on factors that impact successful BI deployment. The research further investigates the relationship between successful BI deployment and sustainable competitive advantage of the telecommunications organizations. Another important aim of this study is to determine the effect of moderating factors such as organization culture, business strategy, and use of BI tools on BI deployment and the sustainability of firm’s competitive advantage.

This research uses combination of resource-based theory and diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory to examine BI success and its relationship with firm’s sustainability. The research adopts the positivist paradigm and a two-phase sequential mixed method consisting of qualitative and quantitative approaches are employed. A tentative research model is developed first based on extensive literature review. The chapter presents a qualitative field study to fine tune the initial research model. Findings from the qualitative method are also used to develop measures and instruments for the next phase of quantitative method. The study includes a survey study with sample of business analysts and decision makers in telecommunications firms and is analyzed by partial least square-based structural equation modeling.

The findings reveal that some internal resources of the organizations such as BI governance and the perceptions of BI’s characteristics influence the successful deployment of BI. Organizations that practice good BI governance with strong moral and financial support from upper management have an opportunity to realize the dream of having successful BI initiatives in place. The scope of BI governance includes providing sufficient support and commitment in BI funding and implementation, laying out proper BI infrastructure and staffing and establishing a corporate-wide policy and procedures regarding BI. The perceptions about the characteristics of BI such as its relative advantage, complexity, compatibility, and observability are also significant in ensuring BI success. The most important results of this study indicated that with BI successfully deployed, executives would use the knowledge provided for their necessary actions in sustaining the organizations’ competitive advantage in terms of economics, social, and environmental issues.

This study contributes significantly to the existing literature that will assist future BI researchers especially in achieving sustainable competitive advantage. In particular, the model will help practitioners to consider the resources that they are likely to consider when deploying BI. Finally, the applications of this study can be extended through further adaptation in other industries and various geographic contexts.

Business intelligence (BI) has been applied in various domains to take better decisions and it provides different level of information to its stakeholders according to the information needs. The purpose of this paper is to present a literature review on recent works in BI. The two principal aims in this survey are to identify areas lacking in recent research, thereby offering potential opportunities for investigation.

To simplify the study on BI literature, it is segregated into seven categories according to the usage. Each category of work is analyzed using parameters such as purpose, domain, problem identified, solution applied, benefit and outcome.

The BI contribution in various domains, ongoing research in BI, the convergence of BI domains, problems and solutions, results of congregated domains, core problems and key solutions. It also outlines BI and its components composition, widely applied BI solutions such as algorithm-based, architecture-based and model-based solutions. Finally, it discusses BI implementation issues and outlines the security and privacy policies adopted in BI environment.

In this survey BI has been discussed in theoretical perspective whereas practical contribution has been given less attention.

A comprehensive survey on BI which identifies areas lacking in recent research and providing potential opportunities for investigation.

A key finding in the extant literature on adopting information systems has been the importance of management support and a champion. Further research has indicated that business managers need to have appropriate IT knowledge and skills to lead adoption adequately. In the context of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), this role is usually assumed by the owner/manager. This research aims to synthesise these two tenets by identifying and understanding the type of business intelligence and analytics (BI&A) leadership skills that owners/managers need to develop during the adoption of BI&A.

Five BI&A knowledge areas are identified and connected to different types of BI&A leadership skills through qualitative in-depth case studies of fourteen Australian SMEs.

The case studies reveal that several BI&A leadership skills need to be developed to bring SMEs to higher stages of BI&A adoption.

This study proposes a BI&A leadership skills development framework that allows practitioners to develop progressive BI&A skills concerning managing data, analytical skills, business processes, social and cultural change, and investment decisions to achieve sustainable operational, management and strategic goals.

The paper takes a unique approach that links five knowledge areas to BI&A leadership skills that owners/managers need to ensure for effective adoption and orchestration of BI&A in their organisations. The BI&A leadership framework includes a developmental approach that relates to the iterative and complex nature of BI&A adoption.

Business intelligence (BI) is a strategic approach that can use analytical tools to collect and integrate information, apply business rules and ensure the appropriate visible output of organizational information. This study aims to present the design and implementation of BI in areas of business process improvement for production, distribution and customer services.

This study highlights the process of BI in the production, distribution and customer services based on the National Food Products Company (NFPC) in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This study discusses the step-by-step development process of BI and refers to graphical illustrations of the business needs and the organization's target key performance indicators (KPI).

Based on the business needs and chosen KPIs to maximize production and improve distribution and customer services the BI tool shows that the “star scheme” is the most appropriate one. Relational Online Analytical Processing (ROLAP) based on Mondrian system is employed as Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) architecture since the NFPC's technological infrastructure was better adapted to this vision. The analysis starts with data retrieval from two databases' customer' and production and distribution databases. Finally, visualization and reporting processes that respect the end-users improve the NFPC's decisions.

The study will help other organizations, BI developers, data warehouses (DW) developers and administrators, project managers as well as academic researchers understand how to develop a successful BI framework and implement BI based on business needs.

This is a unique and original study on the BI experience from a UAE-based organization and will encourage other organizations to apply BI in their business process.

This paper aims to show that business intelligence (BI) is a key component of a sustainability-reporting framework for higher education institutions (HEIs).

Four questionnaires were administered to Registrars and managers at 21 South African HEIs and at selected international HEIs. The data analysis entailed both descriptive and inferential statistics.

The study confirmed that factors such as management buy-in, the availability of BI reports and the provision of reporting guidelines were positively related to effective strategic planning. The study shows that the use of BI by South African HEIs is still at a low maturity level.

The case study used is the Nelson Mandela University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. The implications are relevant for all 26 HEIs in South Africa.

HEIs must invest in technological tools, including BI to provide information in understandable and usable formats for management and other relevant stakeholders.

BI reporting can assist all stakeholders to obtain the relevant and required information relating to HEI operations and strategic management initiatives and activities.

The study concludes that HEIs ought to invest in BI technologies that can assist the sustainability reporting process to ensure stakeholder satisfaction and regulatory compliance.

This paper re-conceptualizes and measures brand identity (BI) from a services perspective. This paper aims to develop and test a psychometrically valid and reliable scale to measure service brand identity (SERVBID).

A multi-stage research design was adopted drawing on qualitative and quantitative studies consistent with extant scale development procedures. Qualitative studies comprised a comprehensive literature review, expert panel review and interviews to develop a theoretical framework and generate items. Quantitative studies comprised pilot testing (n = 106), online survey for scale development (n = 246) and scale validation (n = 245) on UK-based consumers using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis.

The study finds support for a five-dimensional SERVBID scale comprising: process identity; organization identity; symbolic identity; servicescape identity; and communication identity.

The SERVBID scale provides practitioners with a practical tool to understand, benchmark and assess SERVBID. The scale will assist marketers in assessing the strength of BI overall as well as the strength of individual facets of BI.

This study provides a deeper and complete understanding of the theoretical construct of BI through a service-dominant lens, in particular recognizing the defining role of the service process and servicescape in SERVBID construction.

The paper intends to find out the business justifications and requirements for incorporating business intelligence (BI) in organizations because many organizations that already have systems in place to collect data and gather information, often find themselves in a situation where they have no tools or roadmaps to put their vast data and information into use for strategic decision making.

In this paper BI and the growing potential for implementing BI is explained. The paper also explains a checklist for implementing BI.

During the last ten years, the approach to business management in the entire globe has deeply changed. Firms have understood the importance of enforcing achievement of the goals defined by their strategy through metrics‐driven management. Firms are evolving into new forms based on knowledge and networks in response to an environment characterized by indistinct organizational boundaries and fast‐paced change. New and complex changes are emerging that will force enterprises to operate in entirely new methods. Understanding the data and transforming, and shaping them into networked marketplaces is a key strategy for any organization to achieve competitive advantage. The business success factor for any enterprise is finding ways to bring the vast amount of data that are flowing within and across the business processes together and making sense out of them. Business Intercenine includes extraction, transformation and loading (ETL), data warehousing, database query and reporting, multidimensional/online analytical processing (OLAP) data analysis, data mining and visualization.

The paper provides useful information on business justifications and requirements for incorporating business intelligence in organizations.

A conceptual model describes important factors within a system and how they relate to one another. They are important because they help to identify system changes that can yield the greatest improvement. Within information retrieval (IR), most research is directed towards multi-document retrieval and a multi-interaction IR user scenario. There are few, if any, IR conceptual models supporting minimal or single-interaction IR (siIR) user scenarios, however the need for siIR systems is growing rapidly. The purpose of this paper is to take the first step towards constructing a task-oriented conceptual model and experimental framework to support siIR research.

A first principles approach is employed to develop a task-oriented conceptual model, called bridging information retrieval (BIR). This model is contrasted with the concept of relevance, a central factor within IR research.

BIR introduces the central concept of bridging information (BI) as the objective of IR systems. BI is the additional information a user requires to complete a task, beyond their innate knowledge. The relationship between BI and relevance is determined.

The theoretical basis of BIR is derived axiomatically; however the resulting system evaluation model is speculative.

The proposed operational framework offers researchers a systematic approach to designing and evaluating siIR systems.

This work contributes a novel task-oriented IR conceptual model and evaluation framework, both centred around the concept of BI for siIR. It also contributes a novel search task classification method.