The diploma thesis is focused on a specific area of self-service business intelligence. The advantage of this approach to the business intelligence is reduction of demands on IT development and using tools by end users. They can generate reports and outputs according to their requirements during the relevant time period. The theoretical part is dedicated to illustrate this concept with all benefits and risks. Furthermore, it describes trends occurring in the domain of business intelligence. These trends transcend outline the domain of business intelligence and are valid throughout IT. The practical part is dedicated to the analysis market of self-service business intelligence tools. On basis of established criteria are then compared these tools and deduced general conclusions regarding their functionality. Then, by using three selected tools is created comprehensive business intelligence task with the aim of clarifying a degree of self-service for these instruments. The main benefit of this thesis is based in the integrated analysis of market self-service business intelligence tools and determination of their functionality.

The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the organizational factors that contribute to effective emerging information technology intelligence processes and products. Emerging information technology is defined as a technology which is little commercialized and is currently adopted by not more than twenty percent of the companies within a given industry. By definition, information technology intelligence is a subdivision of competitive intelligence and business intelligence. I discovered evidence that the information technology intelligence process includes assessment of information technology intelligence needs of consumers, collection of data from internal and external sources, analysis of the collected data and distribution of the analyzed data to the consumers. Exploratory factor analysis confirmed the existence of all the variables in the proposed research model. I found empirical evidence that the final technology intelligence product contributes to better decisions made by consumers, their better environmental scanning, and more funding to information technology departments in organizations from different industries and of different sizes.

I takt med ett ökat informationsflöde i form av data som strömmar in och ut ur företag ökar även företagens beslutsbehov, insikter, kunskaper om sig själva samt konkurrenter. Det finns en hel del olika verktyg och applikationer som hjälper till med analysering av all information som flödar in för att få ett bättre och tydligare beslutsunderlag för strategiska beslut. Business Intelligence (BI) är ett paraplybegrepp av teknologier, applikationer och processer för insamling, lagring, åtkomst och analys av data som ska hjälpa människor att fatta bättre beslut. Trots att BI har expanderat och idag används frekvent av konkurrenskraftiga bolag finns det bolag som misslyckats med eller inte dragit nytta av BI:s underlättande av beslutsfattande. Framhävande anledningar av att BI inte utnyttjats eller implementerats hos bolag beror bland annat på låg motivering av ledningen, utbildningsbrister och brist på förståelsen av konceptet BI samt brister i anställdas kunskaper och i datakvaliteten som överförs mellan externa och interna enheter vilket i slutändan kan leda till fel beslutsfattande. Litteraturen tar upp mycket forskning kring hur stora bolag som exempelvis Amazon, Harrah’s, Capital One och Boston Red Sox använder BI som vardagsmat medan mindre litteratur finns om hur offentliga och särskilt kommunala bolag inom energisektorn använder sig av BI. Det gör att dessa bolag halkar efter i den digitala utvecklingen. Däremot tar litteraturen upp att det finns en stor utvecklings- och användningspotential av BI hos kommunala verksamheter och framförallt energibolag där det idag arbetas mot strategiska mål som syftar till mer hållbarhet, förnybar energi, tidseffektivitet och kostnadsminskningar. Intressanta faktorer för studien är att strategiska beslut inom kommunala bolag alltid måste godkännas av kommunen som dessutom har en del investeringsbegränsningar, avkastningskrav, lagar och miljökrav. I denna studie har därför chefer med strategiskt ansvar inom två kommunala energibolag analyserats genom kvalitativa intervjuer för att få en bild av hur dessa bolag arbetar med strategi och beslutsfattande. Eftersom kommunala bolag lyder under politisk styrning arbetar bolagen idag mycket med att få fram beslutsunderlag och prognoser över hur framtidsplaner ser ut för kommunen vilket sedan presenteras och diskuteras i månadsmöten. En del av besluten fattas sedan efter mötena som även utgör beslutsunderlag för framtida beslut. Den frågeställning som ligger till grund för studien är:Hur kan Business Intelligence stödja strategiska beslut för kommunala bolag inom energisektorn? Resultatet av studien framställer områden där BI skulle kunna användas för att stödja och optimera strategiska beslut för bolagen.

The data produced and collected by organizations represents both challenges and opportunities for the modern firm. Business intelligence and analytics (BI&A) comprises a wide variety of information management technologies and information seeking activities designed to exploit these information resources. As a result, BI&A has been heralded as a source of improved organizational outcomes in both the academic and practitioner literature, and these technologies are among the largest continuous IT expenditures made over the last decade.Despite the interest in BI&A, there is not enough theorizing about its role in improving firm performance. Scholarly investigations of the link between BI&A and organizational benefits are scarce and primarily exploratory in nature. Further, the majority of the extant research on BI&A is techno-centric, conceptualizing BI&A primarily an organizational technical asset. This study seeks to explicate the relationship between BI&A and improved organizational outcomes by viewing this phenomenon through the lens of dynamic capabilities, a promising theoretical perspective from the strategic management discipline. In so doing, this research reframes BI&A as an organizational capability, rather than simply a technical resource. Guided by a comprehensive review of the BI&A and dynamic capabilities literature, as well as a series of semi-structured focus groups with senior-level business practitioners with BI&A experience, this study develops and tests a model of BI&A enabled firm performance. Using a snowball sample, an online survey was administered to 137 business professionals in 24 industries. The data were analyzed using partial least squares (PLS) structural equation modeling (SEM). The findings support the contention that BI&A serve as the sensing and seizing components of an organizational dynamic capability, while transformation is achieved through business process change capability. These factors influence firm financial performance through their impact on the functional performance of the firm’s business processes. Further, this study demonstrates that traditional BI&A success factors are positively associated with BI&A sensing capability. This study makes several important contributions to BI&A research. First, this study addresses a gap in the scholarly literature by establishing a theoretical framework for the role of BI&A in achieving firm performance which is grounded in an established strategic management theory. Second, by drawing on the sense-seize-transform view of dynamic capabilities, this dissertation proposes a new conceptualization of BI&A as sensing and seizing organizational capabilities. Third, this research links the use of BI&A to improved organizational outcomes through the transformation of business processes, consistent with the view that the value of IT is derived from its impact on the value generating processes of the firm. Fourth, by viewing BI&A and business process change as distinct but inter-related components of dynamic capabilities, this research clarifies the role of BI&A in the dynamization of organizational processes, providing insight into the relationship between BI&A and business agility. Finally, this dissertation shows how BI&A capabilities are related to BI&A success factors identified in prior research.

Bakgrund: Beslutstagande är en av de viktigaste processerna inom alla ledningsnivåer. Det kontinuerliga behovet av att kunna ta bättre beslut anses vara kritiskt viktigt för ett företags både kortsiktiga och långsiktiga överlevnad. Bistående i detta moment så har beslutsstödsystem (BSS) i form av Business Intelligence (BI) skapats. Denna utveckling anses vara ett mycket behövligt hjälpmedel för organisationer som vill ta bättre och mer välgrundade beslut. Trots detta visar undersökningar att BI användaren stöter på många användarrelaterade problem samtidigt som studier visar att en minskad upplevd användbarhet av ett Business Intelligence System (BIS) både hindrar och underminerar medarbetarnas beslutstagande. Detta problem har således resulterat i ett intresse för att förstå och fastställa vad som påverkar användbarheten av BIS.  Syfte: Syftet med denna studie är att förstå hur man kan öka användbarheten av BIS sett utifrån end-users perspektiv.  Metod/Tillvägagångssätt: Studiens metod använder en kvalitativ ansats och inkluderar en fallstudie. Empiri har samlats in genom sex semi-strukturerade intervjuer från ett svenskt konsultföretag som har en egenutvecklad BI plattform.  Slutsatser: Sammanfattningsvis kan användbarheten av BIS utifrån empirin förbättras genom ökad system expertis, data kvalité och flexibilitet.  Praktiska följder: Från ett utvecklingsperspektiv kan studiens upptäckter hjälpa att belysa de faktorer som ökar användbarheten i BIS. Det kan även agera som ett vägvisande ramverk för att hjälpa företag i liknande sits där problem upplevs med BIS användning.  Förslag till vidare forskning: Framtida empirisk forskning bör utföras i syftet att validera de framförda påståendena i uppsatsen. Det kan därför vara intressant att studera fler företag med variation på storlek och geografisk placering för att kunna evaluera skillnaden i erhållet resultat. Vidare anses även användbarheten kring Mobil BI redas ut då detta ligger i utvecklingsfokus på framtida marknader och organisationer. / Background: Decision making is one of the most important processes at all levels of management. The continuous need to be able to make better decisions is considered critically important to a company's short-term and long-term survival. Assisting in this step, decision support system (BSS) in the form of Business intelligence (BI) has been created. This is perceived as a necessary aiding tool for organizations that want to make better and more informed decisions. Nevertheless, studies show that the BI user encounters many user related problems while research also show that a reduced perceived usefulness of a Business Intelligence System (BIS) both supresses and undermines employees' decision-making. This problem has thus resulted in an interest in understanding and determining what affects the usefulness of BIS.  Objective: The purpose of this study is to understand on how to increase the usefulness of BIS from an end-user perspective.  Method / Approach: The study method uses a qualitative approach and includes a case study. Empirical data has been collected through six semi-structured interviews from a Swedish consulting firm that employs an inhouse developed BI platform.  Conclusions: In summary, the usability of BIS from the empirical findings can be improved through increased system expertise, data quality and flexibility.  Practical consequences: From a developmental perspective, the study's findings can help elucidate the factors that increase the usefulness of BIS. It can also act as a signposting framework to help companies in similar sites where problems are experienced with BIS use.  Proposal for further research: Further research should be conducted with the purpose of verifying this thesis conclusions. It may therefore be interesting to study additional companies with variation in size as well as geographical location and evaluate the difference in results. Lastly, understanding the usability of Mobil BI could also be interesting to investigate as this is getting more popular in BIS of future markets and organizations.

The domains of Business Intelligence (BI) and social media have meanwhile become significant research fields. While BI aims at supporting an organization’s decisions by providing relevant analytical data, social media is an emerging source of personal and individual knowledge, opinion, and attitudes of stakeholders. For a while, a convergence of the two domains can be observed in real-world implementations and research, resulting in concepts like social BI. Many research questions still remain open – or even worse – are not yet formulated. Therefore, the paper aims at articulating a research agenda for social BI. By means of a literature review we systematically explored previous work and developed a framework. It contrasts social media characteristics with BI design areas and is used to derive the social BI research agenda. Our results show that the integration of social media (data) into a BI system has impact on almost all BI design objects.

The domains of Business Intelligence (BI) and social media have meanwhile become significant research fields. While BI aims at supporting an organization’s decisions by providing relevant analytical data, social media is an emerging source of personal and individual knowledge, opinion, and attitudes of stakeholders. For a while, a convergence of the two domains can be observed in real-world implementations and research, resulting in concepts like social BI. Many research questions still remain open – or even worse – are not yet formulated. Therefore, the paper aims at articulating a research agenda for social BI. By means of a literature review we systematically explored previous work and developed a framework. It contrasts social media characteristics with BI design areas and is used to derive the social BI research agenda. Our results show that the integration of social media (data) into a BI system has impact on almost all BI design objects.

The thesis focuses on the batch processing of bank (retail bank) client data for SOLUS. The main goal of the thesis is to create a batch process that will generate files (monthly report) about clients of one of the bank companies operating in the Czech market (retail banks), according to requirements pre-defined by SOLUS. This will be achieved by analyzing the requirements, designing the pilot solution, and by creating and implementing the batch process for SOLUS. The main contribution of this thesis is a working BI process which will store the data in the required format to the data warehouse. By implementing this process the retail bank can use the data from the register that have been saved to this place by other member organizations which participate in creating SOLUS. The data analysis from the registry can help the retail banks to get detailed information about clients applying for products of the respective bank and will facilitate the decision making during the approval process. The solution of batch report generation for SOLUS has been created by using the tools MS SQL Server 2008 R2 Management Studio, MS SQL Server 2008 R2 Business Intelligence Development Studio, and MS Excel 2010. In this project the data from internal databases of retail bank are analyzed. In order to comply with the rules for information security and data sensitivity, it is not possible to use a large amount of information from internal databases for the purposes of this thesis, but it is possible to clearly demonstrate the functioning of the whole process.

No description available.

Testing in data warehousing has traditionally been done in large chunks at the end of development projects. This has often led to costly bug fixes because fixing bugs that are found late in the development process is generally a very time consuming task. In some cases, there is not enough time to fix these bugs because of narrow project deadlines. This can have major consequences for organizations because business decisions often relies on their data warehouse to provide accurate statistics and data. This study examines a department of a major Swedish agency that recently adopted agile methods to overcome some of the shortcomings associated with traditional data warehouse development. The effects of agile methods on data warehouse testing are examined, as well as the challenges that are needed to overcome for them to be successful. We also touch upon consequences of poor test design and what implications incorrect data that are delivered from a data warehouse can have both internally and externally. In conclusion, the study have found that adopting agile methods have led to test activities being carried out more often, more efficiently and with better results than in the past. In addition, product owners have been continuously involved in the development process through frequent acceptance tests. For agile methods to be successful in data warehouse testing, we also concluded that they need the support of tools, system environments and attitudes both among developers and product owners. / Nej