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There are various definitions of Business Intelligence (BI) in existing literature. BI has become an important IT tool or mechanism that can help organizations to manage, develop, and communicate intangible assets such as information and knowledge. It is often considered essential for organizations operating in the current knowledge-based economy (Alnoukari, 2009). BI is discussed by Gansor, Totok, & Stock (2010) as an analytical process that transfers internal and external data into appropriate knowledge to support decision-making. The term BI has also been defined as the collection, saving, analysis, and provision of data to support the decision-making processes of a company (Seufert & Oehler, 2009).
This article assumes that relevant strategic data will be stored in a structured way in a data warehouse – a “subject-oriented, integrated and time-variant collection of data in support of management’s decisions” (Inmon, 2002, p. 31). This is most likely to be the case in organisations that do not have one large integrated software package – an enterprise resource planning system - fulfilling their systems needs, where there may be less of a business case for a data warehouse. It is more prevalent in organisations – like AKH – where a best of breed systems strategy has been pursued, resulting in a range of different applications and data sources. In such situations, the data warehouse (DWH) is often a key component of overall systems strategy; and it is also the base infrastructural element of a BI system, allowing storage and structuring of data from various systems and external sources, supporting the provision of key management information (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Typical systems architecture underpinning BI tools deployment