Influence of social software features on the reuse of Business Intelligence reports

•We analyze which social software features influence the usefulness of BI reports.•We test theory-based hypotheses in an experiment with knowledge workers.•Users of BI reports are mostly influenced by the report’s argument quality.•Personal characteristics also influence the users’ perception of report usefulness.

Vendors of Business Intelligence (BI) software have recently started extending their systems by features from social software. The generated reports may include profiles of report authors and later be supplemented by information about users who accessed the report, user evaluations of the report, or other social cues. With these features, users can support each other in discovering and filtering valuable information in the context of BI. Users who consider reusing an existing report that was not designed by or for them can now not only peruse the report content but also take the social cues into consideration. We analyze which report features influence their perception of report usefulness. Our analysis is based on the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) which assumes that information recipients are either influenced by the quality of information or peripheral cues. We conduct an experiment with knowledge workers from different companies. The results confirm most hypotheses derived from ELM in the context of BI reports but we also find a deviation from the basic ELM expectations. We find that even people who are able and motivated to scrutinize the report content use community cues to decide on report usefulness in addition to report quality considerations.