Getting value from Business Intelligence systems: A review and research agenda

Much of the research on Business Intelligence (BI) has examined the ability of BI systems to help organizations address challenges and opportunities. However, the literature is fragmented and lacks an overarching framework to integrate findings and systematically guide research. Moreover, researchers and practitioners continue to question the value of BI systems. This study reviews and synthesizes empirical Information System (IS) studies to learn what we know, how well we know, and what we need to know about the processes of organizations obtaining business value from BI systems. The study aims to identify which parts of the BI business value process have been studied and are still most in need of research, and to propose specific research questions for the future. The findings show that organizations appear to obtain value from BI systems according to the process suggested by Soh and Markus (1995), as a chain of necessary conditions from BI investments to BI assets to BI impacts to organizational performance; however, researchers have not sufficiently studied the probabilistic processes that link the necessary conditions together. Moreover, the research has not sufficiently covered all relevant levels of analysis, nor examined how the levels link up. Overall, the paper identified many opportunities for researchers to provide a more complete picture of how organizations can and do obtain value from BI. •How do organizations obtain value from BI systems?•Comprehensive review of BI literature from 1/2000 to 8/2015•Mapped literature findings to integrated framework of BI value•Results show the field's knowledge of the necessary conditions for obtaining value.•Results show the field's lack of knowledge of the processes for obtaining value.