Benefits, Justification and Implementation Planning of Real‑Time Business Intelligence Systems

Abstract

Abstract: While traditional Business Intelligence (BI) environments have for some time assisted organizations with their information requirements, they have become increasingly incompatible with the pressures of current business environments. They are geared towards analysis of historical information, and limited in their ability to close the latency gap between information and action. This has encouraged a movement towards real‑time BI (RTBI) systems. Although these overcome latency aspects of traditional BI, and offer many value‑adding benefits to organizations, their implementation has been hampered by technological complexities, and has required changes to the business environment, and high costs to put them in place. Justification of such IT investments remains a problem as they provide many intangible benefits incompatible with traditional (financial) IT benefits measurement models. For these reasons, the research set out to investigate and understand the technological components and organizational changes surrounding RTBI implementation. To further facilitate justification, application areas and benefits of RTBI were also explored. Data was collected through semi‑structured in‑depth interviews in organizations across several industries that had implemented or were implementing RTBI systems. A qualitative thematic analysis was then used to investigate the issues further. The study confirmed that RTBI is likely to require major changes to technical architecture, which may involve acquisition of new tools and technologies. Several issues at the organisational level also need to be addressed, and the research uncovered a wide range of practical RTBI applications and analytics applied across industries; process intelligence was found to play a fundamental role in many of these. The study reveals that RTBI can offer significant and measurable improvements, help organizations remain competitive, and in the long run, drive strategic business objectives from a grass roots level. To assist organisations to take advantage of this, a roadmap for RTBI justification and implementation planning is suggested.