BI-based organisations: new possibilities

Celina Olszak (University of Economics, Katowice, Poland) spoke about the use of business intelligence (BI) in organisations. Using Gartner's maturity model, she analysed the responses from detailed interviews conducted with executives of 20 family-owned firms (all of whom were making use of BI tools), to assess the impact of business intelligence tools on business success. Interestingly, Olszak found that the mature use of BI-tools seems to be associated with increased business success. However, her research was limited to a specific segment of the business population. Further work is required to determine whether the reported use–success correlations can be generalised to wider populations, particularly larger organisations where the pervasive adoption of tools and processes to institutionalise knowledge and realise tangible value is perhaps more difficult to achieve.