Lars Bækgaard

Business Intelligence (BI) is playing a major role in most Enterprise Information Systems (EIS) architectures providing strategic and tactical management information on selected issues. BI is typically detached from mainstream transaction systems and provides a translated view of the business with high ranking executives as key audience. BI has as such a number of distinctive characteristics proposing that management of BI need more attention. This paper is based on an in-depth, longitudinal qualitative case study using an interpretivistic and sociologically inspired methodology. This study present findings within the relationship between technology and business in BI is particularly complex as operational issues are secondary to the desired systems outcome’s character of a management construct. A management framework is proposed for BI related to its special characteristics involving enterprise communication between operational and tactical/strategic levels, inexact data, representation of historical consensus, and intrinsic translation between management culture and technology. BI should be viewed as integrated in and mutually interacting with corporate EIS. This paper contributes to a dualistic understanding of BI as both a technological and a social system. The originality of this paper is in its augmentation of IS management with a better comprehension of the BI aspect intended to contribute to a distinct management framework for BI.