Key Success Factors in Business Intelligence

Abstract: Business Intelligence can bring critical capabilities to an organization, but the implementation of such capabilities is often plagued with problems and issues. Why is it that certain projects fail, while others succeed? The theoretical problem and the aim of this thesis is to identify the factors that are present in successful Business Intelligence projects and organize them into a framework of critical success factors. A survey was conducted during the spring of 2011 to collect primary data on Business Intelligence projects. It was directed to a number of different professionals operating in the Business Intelligence field in large enterprises, primarily located in Poland and primarily vendors, but given the similarity of Business Intelligence initiatives across countries and increasing globalization of large enterprises, the conclusions from this thesis may well have relevance and be applicable for projects conducted in other countries. Findings confirm that Business Intelligence projects are wrestling with both technological and nontechnological problems, but the non-technological problems are found to be harder to solve as well as more time consuming than their technological counterparts. The thesis also shows that critical success factors for Business Intelligence projects are different from success factors for IS projects in general and Business Intelligences projects have critical success factors that are unique to the subject matter. Major differences can be predominately found in the non-technological factors, such as the presence of a specific business need to be addressed by the project and a clear vision to guide the project. Results show that successful projects have specific factors present more frequently than nonsuccessful. Such factors with great differences are the type of project funding, business value provided by each iteration of the project and the alignment of the project to a strategic vision for Business Intelligence. Furthermore, the thesis provides a framework of critical success factors that, according to the results of the study, explains 61% of variability of success of projects. Given these findings, managers responsible for introducing Business Intelligence capabilities should focus on a number of non-technological factors to increase the likelihood of project success. Areas which should be given special attention are: making sure that the Business Intelligence solution is built with end users in mind, that the Business Intelligence solution is closely tied to company‟s strategic vision and that the project is properly scoped and prioritized to concentrate on best opportunities first. Keywords: Critical Success Factors, Business Intelligence, Enterprise Data Warehouse Projects, Success Factors Framework, Risk Management