Suboptimal business intelligence implementations: understanding and addressing the problems
| Pages | 307-320 |
| Published date | 10 August 2015 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JSIT-03-2015-0023 |
| Date | 10 August 2015 |
| Author | Janelle Boyton,Peter Ayscough,David Kaveri,Raymond Chiong |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Information systems |
Suboptimal business intelligence
implementations: understanding
and addressing the problems
Janelle Boyton, Peter Ayscough and David Kaveri
Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, Australia, and
Raymond Chiong
School of Design, Communication and IT, The University of Newcastle,
Newcastle, Australia
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the failures of business intelligence (BI)
implementations and to understand why they fail as well as what action can be taken to ensure
implementation success.
Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on a literature review of academic journals
and case studies relating to BI, and the success and failure of the implementation of such projects. It
focuses on four areas of BI projects to measure success: return on investment, non-concrete measures,
project management measures and user satisfaction. The literature provides insights into what factors
contribute to the success of a BI implementation and what factors contribute to the failure. Once the
failures can be ascertained, a strategic approach to remedying the failure is discussed.
Findings – Implementation failure specically relating to BI is a rarely discussed topic. This paper
provides an understanding of why BI implementations fail and how organisations can ensure, prior to
implementing such a solution, the considerations that need to be made to ensure that success is achieved
from a technological, organisational and process perspective.
Originality/value – The paper uses empirical evidence from the literature to provide an
understanding of why BI implementations fail. The factors contributing to BI failure are examined
along with insights into how to succeed with a BI implementation.
Keywords Business intelligence, Business strategy, Project failure, Project implementation,
Suboptimal implementation
Paper type Literature review
Introduction
Having its roots in the decision support technologies developed in the 1970s, the term
business intelligence (BI) emerged in 1989 (Lawton, 2006). The expectation of BI systems
is to “improve the effectiveness of the core business processes that drive business
performance” (Williams and Williams, 2003).
While there are many BI success stories, failures in the implementation of BI are less
frequently and less enthusiastically publicised. Feng et al. (2009) suggested that more
than 50 per cent of BI projects fail to meet the expectation of accelerating the
decision-making process for organisations – a principal motivation for investing in BI.
Published user experiences of BI implementations suggested a continuum of success
levels, from high to low. Though an implementation may not be considered an outright
failure, it may fail to meet the high expectations of stakeholders within the business.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/1328-7265.htm
Suboptimal
business
intelligence
307
Received 27 March 2015
Revised 29 March 2015
Accepted 30 March 2015
Journalof Systems and
InformationTechnology
Vol.17 No. 3, 2015
pp.307-320
©Emerald Group Publishing Limited
1328-7265
DOI 10.1108/JSIT-03-2015-0023
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