From Home-Made to Strategy-Enabling Business Intelligence: the Transformational Journey of a Retail Organisation

The paper examines how a retail organisation transformed from home-made Business Intelligence (BI) to a mature BI-based organisation, over a decade long period of time. We engaged in an Action Research (AR) inquiry where the transformation was explored through the first-hand experiences of one of the co-authors. Concepts from the organisational learning theory are used to analyse the organisational transformation and develop an in-depth understanding of the role of BI applications in this process. Central to the transformational process was an organisational champion and the shadow BI community that promoted BI-thinking across the organisation. As the mental models of individual organisational members transformed, through small-scale BI innovations, BI started to have a transformational impact on human work. Once the strategic importance of BI became the shared mental model in the organisation, BI became a strategic transformer, impacting the strategy as well as the strategy development process that became BI-enabled and driven.