Business Intelligence

Inhaltsangabe:Abstract:

The worldwide process of globalization makes it necessary for a firm to collect in-formation about its external environment (competitors, stakeholders, products, markets, etc.) and to relate it with the internal information of the firm. In 1985 Porter and Millar (1985) described an ?information revolution? that affects competition in different ways.

Collecting internal and external data is the necessary first step to guarantee a valid information base for strategic decisions and successful actions. The evaluation of these data for decision-making processes and the ability to see important relations and structures in the data can be supported by new IT-applications, called Business Intelligence (henceforth BI).

This thesis examines the latest developments of information technologies from the Resource-based perspective of Strategic Management. The general question that motivates this thesis and needs to be answered is: Can the use of Business Intelligence Applications lead to a sustainable competitive advantage?

One a more concrete level it asks, if Business Intelligence solutions can be resources that lead directly to a long-lasting competitive advantage or at least to a temporary advantage. Answering those questions pursues the aim of making a step towards the operationalization of the Resource-based View (RBV) and the more specialized Dynamic Capability View (DCV).

The subject of the analysis is a specific Business Intelligence software solution, which has been chosen because it is representative of all BI applications. It is offered worldwide on the markets for analytical applications in Europe, Asia and America and based on the common data warehouse technology. This thesis is supposed to provide the base for possible further empirical work regarding this topic. The empirical work of this thesis is done in the mode of a case study concentrating on a set of information technology products.

The examination of a specific application that is offered on the market Business Intelligence on an analysis based on the Resource-based view enables the proving of statements about BI with the help of concrete examples. The case study is based to substantial parts on information derived from personal interviews with Siemens Business Services, Germany and information available in the Internet.

The first part of this thesis (section 2) gives an introduction and categorization of Business Intelligence. Using the example of the [¿]