Realizing the Value of Business Intelligence

Business Intelligence (BI) remains one of the top priority issues for CIOs and investment in BI technologies continues to grow. This research attempted to understand how an organization can realize the business value derived from their investment in BI. A single, in-depth case study was undertaken in a major South African financial services organization. An extended IT business value process model, derived from the research literature, was used as a framework. The study found that the realization of business value from BI is highly dependent on activities that occur in all 5 stages of the process model – from the alignment of the BI strategy with that of the organization, through to the way in which the business benefits of BI are measured, but that the actual measurement of these remains challenging due to the delayed, indirect and intangible nature of many of the benefits.