Taking Advantage of Business Intelligence in a Complex-Systems Environment

I hereby certify that all material in this final year project which is not my own work has been identified and that no work is included for which a degree has already been conferred on me. Abstract Business intelligence has fundamentally changed how many companies conduct their business. The focus of academic literature has however been on volume-operation companies that provide services to millions of customers. Complex-systems companies have fewer customers and pursue customer needs by providing more customized products and services. The knowledge in the research society is limited to volume-operation companies and there a need for more case studies regarding how companies actually use their information systems, specifically complex-systems companies. This work looks at a case of a complex-systems company with the overall aim to see how complex-systems companies may take advantage of business intelligence. A framework was used to measure BI maturity; expressed future needs were compared to future trends in BI literature and BI usage in specific areas was analyzed with the help of a framework from BI literature. The results indicate that the company is somewhere between Aspirational and Experienced with respect to BI maturity. BI is used for reporting a variety of key performance indicators and the main analysis tool for various calculations is Excel. The expressed future needs are mainly strategy-driven and technology-driven and often involve better and faster access to information. The difference in the business models of volume-operations companies and complex-systems companies could influence the BI maturity and help to explain the maturity difference between these two types of companies. Furthermore, the results indicate that there is a difference between the roles of BI tools in complex-systems companies compared to volume-operations. Acknowledgements When embarking on a project like this, it is never done by the student alone. This is the final work after four years of studies, and through all these years I have had the support and encouragement from my family. There have been periods where my children, Hekla Katrin and Andri Thor did not see me for days as they were asleep when I came home, and I was gone before they woke up. For that I am sorry. Their mother, my fiancée, has helped both me and them through these times and all other times for that matter with her support, love and understanding. Thank you, Kristbjörg. I have been privileged to have the opportunity to work with …