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<p>Introduction</p><p>Organizations are exposed to a rapidly changing business environment with never ending challenges. Investments in information technology (IT) have been one common approach to support organizations. Business Intelligence (BI), an off-spring from IT, is a system that assists many organizations in taking more accurate and timely decisions, improving process monitoring and providing better support for decision making. Recently organizations have started to realize the value of investing in BI, by discovering its analytical methods and capabilities to create business value.</p><p>Problem</p><p>Investments in BI have increased substantially over the past years and one reason for this might be due to vendors praise about BI’s ability to deliver business value. Significantly increased business value, better decision making, and high returns on investments are only a few benefits that have been claimed for. When considering the fact that it is very difficult to measure any direct benefits from IT investments in general, and BI as a consequence, an interest for analyzing the arguments used for selling BI emerged.</p><p>Purpose</p><p>The purpose of this thesis is to identify what arguments vendors and suppliers use when selling BI solutions, and explore their value by analyzing them through the use of existing theories from literature.</p><p>Method</p><p>A qualitative approach has been adopted, where unstructured interviews with BI vendors and suppliers were conducted. An inductive approach has been applied to gather arguments and then shifted to a deductive, in order to finalize the study and analyze arguments with appropriate theory. The research has been performed from without the Swedish market with well-known organizations.</p><p>Conclusions</p><p>A single version of the truth, control, and time savings are credible arguments for investing in BI. Furthermore, cost savings and improved analytical capabilities are fairly credible, whereas increased efficiency has least credibility when analyzed against theories. In general, we believe that the ability to gain from these positive effects from BI, organizations have to take an active role in realizing these.</p>

<p>Historically, decision support systems have been used in organizations to facilitate better decisions. Business Intelligence has become important in recent years because the business environment is more complex and changes faster than ever before. Organizations have started to realize the value of existing information in operational, managerial, and strategic decision making. By using analytical methods and data warehousing, decision support can now be used in a flexible way and assist decision makers in decision making processes. Increasing investments in Business Intelligence indicate that it can bring value to organizations. Benefits such as the ability to access relevant and timely decision support when it is needed can be of tremendous value when the use of existing information has become more a question of survival or bankruptcy for an organization, than profit or loss. Thus, it would be interesting to see how decision support and decision making have changed in organizations after implementing a Business Intelligence system. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate if and how Business Intelligence has changed decision support and decision making processes.A deductive approach using a qualitative method has been used with semi-structured elite interviews. The thesis aims to investigate the manufacturing industry located in the Jönköping region in Sweden. The interviewed organizations are Husqvarna AB, Fläkt Woods AB, Myresjöhus AB, and Kinnarps AB. Our analysis shows positive effects of Business Intelligence in organizations with improvements of decision support due to timeliness, accessibility, quality, and better control of organizational information. As improvements in decision support has occurred, decision making has become better. Complicated problems are now easier to interpret by decision makers. Our research also concludes that intuition still has a major impact in decision making processes.</p>

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2002. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 261-272).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wyoming, 2007. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on June 11, 2009). Includes bibliographical references (p. 82-89).

Thesis (M.S. in Computer Science)--Naval Postgraduate School, March 2004. / Thesis advisor(s): Man-Tak Shing, Richard Riehle. Includes bibliographical references (p. 89). Also available online.

Thesis (M.S. in Information Technology Management)--Naval Postgraduate School, March 2004. / Thesis advisor(s): Alex Bordetsky. Includes bibliographical references (p. 83-85). Also available online.

Thesis (M.S. in Mechanical Engineering and M.S. in Information Technology Management)--Naval Postgraduate School, September 2003. / Thesis advisor(s): Joshua Gordis, Dan Boger. Includes bibliographical references (p. 85-86). Also available online.

Thesis (M.S.)--West Virginia University, 2003. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains ix, 161 p. : ill. (some col.). Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 49).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri--Columbia, 2002. / "May 2002." Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 104-114).