The Secret of my Success: An exploratory study of Business Intelligence management in the Norwegian Industry

The purpose of this paper is the exploration of the management of Business Intelligence (BI) solutions in the Norwegian industry. BI aims to improve data analysis and enhance business performance. Nonetheless, academics and practitioners note that BI is complex and difficult to manage. We interviewed BI managers in 5 companies who had been awarded the Norwegian Computer Society's BI prize, based on the following research question: What can we learn from the successful BI implementations and management in award-winning Norwegian companies? We surmise two findings. First, building upon concepts derived from the Digital Infrastructure Theory we find that while the Norwegian industry still has a traditional, complex BI architecture, it is scalable in the sense that they can add or remove elements, or even scrap the whole BI solution. The companies demonstrate innovation and adoption through their use of dashboards and real-time data. In light of these findings we propose a future research agenda for BI. Second, we offer three lessons for managers of BI in organisations.