Business intelligence adoption : assessing its impact on decision making within Maltese organisations

Abstract

Business Intelligence (B.I.) is being adopted due to its widely regarded impact on decision making within organisations. However, limited research has been done on business intelligence within Maltese organisations. Therefore, this research aimed to analyse how B.I. is being adopted within micro to medium sized Maltese organisations and its impact. This was achieved through quantitative research where data was collected from seventy-four decision makers. It was found that B.I. is mainly used by ‘professionals’ and ‘managers’ within organisations undertaking ‘information and communication’ and ‘financial and insurance’ economic activity. However, the sector impacted most was ‘manufacturing, mining and quarrying and other industry’ while ‘financial and insurance’ was the fifth most impacted sector. Furthermore, access to business intelligence is an issue faced by small organisations and even more so by micro organisations. B.I. was found to have a ‘High’ impact by increasing confidence in the decision made and enabling access to data, among other benefits. Unintuitively, there was found to be no advantage in higher business analytical levels and B.I. maturity does not result in a higher B.I. impact. Furthermore, while the use and impact of B.I. are positively correlated, the use of B.I. is low with almost half of decision makers only using it weekly or monthly and mainly for strategic or tactical decisions. These findings imply that due to its high impact, B.I. adoption in Malta needs to increase within certain sectors and especially within micro organisations. Additionally, existing B.I. systems need to be improved since their maturity was found to be comparable to that of European organisations in 2014 and these systems should be used more frequently to maximise their impact.