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value of expert analysis is underestimated, and
most probably organizations are not making use
of the full potential of BI-technologies. Further-
more, it must not be forgotten that although only
relatively few end-users are capable of conduct-
ing advanced analysis, results can be shared with
many. To conclude, in order to benefit from the
potential of the available data in an organization,
and to ensure a flexible BI process it is important
to be able to include a substantial amount of power
users in each process, and relatively few expert
users to fully take advantage of the possibilities
that BI has to offer.
established by making sure that end-users are
provided with a solution that matches their indi-
vidual characteristics, and provides added value
in task execution. The main deliverable or in the
design science approach referred to as 'artifact'
developed in this research, is the so-called “BI-
FIT Framework”, which has been developed to
support organizations in establishing this “fit”. It
can be used to help organizations to identify and
fulfill the needs of end-users, thereby improving
adoption and increasing satisfaction of the BI
end-user base, which is not only applicable for
new BI implementations, but can also be useful
to “assess” existing BI implementations, from the
end-user perspective. Another way of utilizing
the BI-FIT Framework is to investigate whether
a “fit” exists between the organization and BI. If,
for example it appears that hardly any “power” or
“expert” users exist within an organization, it could
be concluded that the potential of BI-technologies
is insufficiently utilized. Or contrariwise if only
“power” or “expert” users exist, this could mean
that time and money is wasted, because of decen-
tralized development, continuous reinvention of
the wheel, license and/or training costs.
concLusion
This research has been triggered by the observation
that BI applications have low adoption rates within
organizations and many BI projects fall short of
their promise to deliver value. After investigating
the problem area, it appeared that this is caused by
among others the technology-driven approach that
prevails at BI implementations, focusing largely
on BI-automation. Unfortunately, because of this
approach little attention is spent to the actual (busi-
ness) end-users of BI, which does not assure that
a “fit” is established between BI end-users, tasks
and technologies, which is crucial for the adoption
of BI by individual end-users. Therefore, one of
the most important requirements of any BI project
should be to understand “who” the end-users are,
in order to determine “what” they need, which is
extremely important for achieving BI success.
However, it appears from the case investigations
that in practice, BI projects constrained by a
limited amount of time and budget often focus
on the technical realization of the system, which
is a very concrete thing, and seems to be more
important than making sure the actual end-users
are provided with an appropriate solution.
For an end-user to adopt BI, it is important
that a “fit” is established between the BI end-
user and the BI solution. The end-user fit can be
Limitations and further research
Focusing on the objectivity of the research, it is
important to note the limitations identified. First of
all, it is important to note that qualitative research
proposes a risk for the objectivity of the research,
because when conducting case study research,
a certain influence of the experiences, opinions
and feelings of the researcher on the analysis is
possible. Furthermore, the investigation of the
case organizations end-user constituencies has
been based on respondents' knowledge of BI us-
age in their organizations. Therefore, the position
of the respondents in the organization and their
viewpoints might have biased the validation.
No quantitative methods have been applied to
investigate the end-users communities for the
specific cases. For further research, it would be
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