Critical Success Factors of Business Intelligence System Implementations

Business Intelligence (BI) systems are applied by increasing numbers of organizations in a wide range of sectors. Despite the growing numbers of BI solutions and the experience augmented in many implementation projects worldwide, as well as the value that BI systems provide to organizations, IT literature lacks a coherent set of definitions through which BI systems can be classified, categorized, and assessed. Furthermore, BI implementation projects often do not succeed or do not fully accomplish the degrees of value and performance as expected, when firms fail to complete the system implementation, to satisfy the needs of users or when the benefits BI systems produce are lower than anticipated. This paper presents an analytical framework through which BI systems are defined and classified. On the basis of this framework, possible technical, organizational, and personal factors that affect the failure, partial or full success of BI system implementations are discussed. These factors are followed by a case study and empirical data analyses that exemplify and assess the extent to which various organizational attributes and properties of users influence the success or failure of BI implementation projects. Finally, implications regarding the management of BI system implementation projects and the organizations that apply them are derived.