Implementing Business Intelligence in Electricity Markets

Business intelligence is one of the most promising approaches to achieve organizational success. A number of articles have set the basis for its development and implementation; see Jourdan, Rainer and Marshall (2008) for a review of the literature between 1997 and 2006. Leader companies have documented satisfactory experiences with real time business intelligence; see for instance the case of Continental Airlines in Watson, Wixom, Hoffer, Anderson-Lehman and Reynolds (2006), and Wixom, Watson, Reynolds and Hoffer (2008). Business intelligence (from now on, BI) has succeeded in pointing out the need of introducing complex, top-level technologies of data analysis “to aid in controlling the vast stocks and flow of business information around and within the organization by first identifying and then processing the information into condensed and useful managerial knowledge and intelligence” (Lönnqvist & Pirttimäki, 2006, p. 32). But the emphasis on the efficient analysis of quantitative structured data has led to an undue dependence on specific tools, and this dependence aBStract