business intelligence implementation in small medium...
TRANSCRIPT
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Business intelligence implementation in
small medium-size enterprise in China:
---a case study of X Shipping Agent Company
A study submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master
of Science in Information Management
at
THE UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD
by
Liu Chang
September 2009
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Acknowledgements
I would like to show best regards to my supervisor Professor Nigel Ford who give
me best help for my dissertation and taking time out of the busy working to meet me.
Without the useful and helpful supporting, this research would not complete.
I would also like to thanks the owners of the SMEs, to respond my questionnaire and
interview. They give me the most important primary data to do my research.
Furthermore, l would like to thanks to my family, my father and mother. They
sponsoring my entire studying and living and have the opportunity to study in
University of Sheffield
Last but not the least; I would like to thank all my classmates. They also give many
helps in my study period.
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Abstract
With the development of information technique, a new tool and the idea of
management called business intelligence is becoming popular in the worldwide. But
in China, the business intelligence is still at initial stage. To do research in business
intelligence is necessary and useful.
The primary aim of the research is to find the current condition of business
intelligence use SMEs, especially in Chinese SMEs. Alone with the primary aim, the
development of business intelligence use in worldwide was presented that business
intelligence is a new and hotpot research area and becoming a popular in the large
company and gradual implement in the SMEs. Moreover, to find the barriers of
business intelligence launch in the SMEs such as the implementation cost and time.
Questionnaire and interview research approach were selected to collect primary data
and information. There are 95 respondents answered the questionnaire. With the
collection of the primary data and information, it was processed by SPSS, a statistical
tool.
The discussion was presented. It was discuss what the research find and the reason of
them. And the discussion was followed by the conclusion and recommendations
which give the suggestion to implement business intelligence in Chinese SMEs.
Key words: business intelligence, decision making, Chinese SMEs, barriers of
business intelligence implementation
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Contents
Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................................... 2
Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... 3
Chapter 1 Introduction: ................................................................................................................... 6
1.1 Background of the research .............................................................................................. 6
1.2 Statement of the problem ................................................................................................. 7
1.3 Purpose of the research .................................................................................................... 8
1.4 Objective of the research .................................................................................................. 9
1.5Research question .............................................................................................................. 9
1.6 Structure of the research ................................................................................................ 10
1.7 Significance of the research ............................................................................................ 10
Chapter 2 Literature Review .......................................................................................................... 11
2.1 introduction ..................................................................................................................... 11
2. 2 The Definition of Business Intelligence .......................................................................... 11
2.3 The Framework for Business Intelligence Systems .......................................................... 14
2.4 The Implementation of Business Intelligence ................................................................. 15
2.4.1Data Warehouse .................................................................................................... 15
2.4.2 Data Mining .......................................................................................................... 17
2.4.3 On-line Analytical Processing ............................................................................... 18
2.4.4 Intelligence Decision Supporting System ............................................................. 19
2.4.5 Executive Information System .............................................................................. 22
2.4.6 Competitive Intelligence ...................................................................................... 23
2.4.7 Data Market ......................................................................................................... 24
2.5 Business Intelligence implementation in the SMEs ........................................................ 25
2.6 Business Intelligence Use in China .................................................................................. 26
2.7 The Necessity of Chinese SMEs Implementing Business Intelligence ............................. 27
2.8 The factors of the business intelligence implementation in Chinese SMEs .................... 27
2.9 The Difficulties of Business Intelligence Implementation in Chinese SMEs .................... 28
2.10 A simple module of business intelligence based on the open technique ..................... 30
Chapter 3 Methodology ................................................................................................................ 33
3.1 Research approach: ......................................................................................................... 33
3.2 Research strategy: quantitative research and qualitative research ................................ 35
3.3 The reliability and validity of the quantitative research approach ................................. 36
3.4 Methods of investigation................................................................................................. 36
3.5 Questionnaire survey: ..................................................................................................... 37
3.5.1 Sampling of the questionnaires ............................................................................ 38
3.5.2 The structure of the questionnaires design ......................................................... 38
3.6 Interview ......................................................................................................................... 43
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3.6.1 Types of interview approach ................................................................................ 44
3.6.2 Interview Sampling: .............................................................................................. 44
3.6.3 Interview question design .................................................................................... 45
3.7 Case study ....................................................................................................................... 46
Chapter 4 Data analysis and findings ............................................................................................ 47
4.1 Introduction:.................................................................................................................... 47
4.2 Questionnaire condition of respondents ........................................................................ 47
4.3 Data analysis and finding of questionnaire ..................................................................... 47
4.4 Data analysis and findings of interview:.......................................................................... 72
Chapter 5 Discussion ..................................................................................................................... 77
Chapter 6 Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 83
6.1 Recommendations: ......................................................................................................... 84
6.2 The limitation of this research......................................................................................... 85
6.3 Further research .............................................................................................................. 86
Reference ...................................................................................................................................... 87
Appendix A: Questionnaire ........................................................................................................... 94
Appendix B interview question ..................................................................................................... 98
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Chapter 1 Introduction:
‘Business intelligence is any activity, tool or process used to obtain the best
information to support the process of making decisions’ --Scheps, 2008
1.1 Background of the research
With the development of business intelligence, it not only belongs to large companies
but also small/medium-size enterprises (Rasmussen et al, 2002). To find how
Small/medium-sized enterprises use business intelligence in their routine work is
becoming a new hotspot.
In recent decades, world business intelligence techniques have been growing
increasingly mature. There are many decision makers from enterprises who have
recognized that business intelligence implementation could develop enterprise
competitiveness. In the US, there are many companies that have already
implemented business intelligence to help the directors managing the company and
making decisions (Loshin, 2003).
The Gartner Group defined that business intelligence consists of the data warehouses,
query report system, data mining, database and OLAP, which supports the technique
and implementation of enterprise decision making (Gartner Group, 2006). IBM
believes that a series of integration of data collection and analysis strategy could
support by systems and techniques. It should conclude what data and information
they need, who will use the data and how to translate the data into useful results with
the process of business intelligence (Biere, 2003). At present, the concept of business
intelligence is not only software products and tools but also a unified whole
implementation solution; even more, it could become a management thought and
express the capability of whole, precise, timely in-depth data and information
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analysis and process to support the management (Turban et al, 2007).
In the general modern business operation, there should be a majority of data and
information which includes orders, stores, accounts, contact records and information
about customers (Simon & Shaffer, 2001). How to make use of these data and
information to improve the management of the business condition and give support
to the development of the decision making has became the themes of research into
business intelligence; in other words, how to find the data and information from the
business process and capture the useful information in terms of the previous work to
make an intelligent decision.
The general processes of business intelligence implementation are, firstly, to access
data. All the data that business intelligence needs exists in the business operation and
subsystem. At the beginning of the use of business intelligence, companies should
process the data and its resources in aggregate, combine them and unweave them,
then analyze and store all of the data and information in the database and use the
business intelligence tool, OLAP, to analyze the data and give the results. Moreover,
the act step, considered with the result from the business intelligence analysis, can
improve and develop the management of the companies.
1.2 Statement of the problem
In China, most of the implementation of business intelligence is used in the large
companies in the industries of telecommunication, banking, healthcare, etc. The
business intelligence implementation is strongly affected by the company’s
informationization; thus, more than 50% of manufacturing companies and 41.2% of
retail companies are operating with a business intelligence system (Chinabizintel,
2009).
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It is over a decade since the development from MIS to ERP. Many
small/medium-sized enterprises have already implemented ERP and, with the
accumulation of decades, there is a vast amount of historical data and information,
but, according to the restraint of the management level of firms, most of the data
which the Small/medium-sized enterprises collected remains at the lower level.
When the decisions makers want to use and analyse the data, most of the
Small/medium-sized enterprises use the methods of: 1 use the reporting output from
ERP; 2 translate the data from ERP to Excel and process them by manual integration;
3 second time process development in terms of the need. Therefore, there are many
complex electronic tables (Tan et al, 2006).
In fact, there are many managers of Chinese Small/medium-sized enterprises who do
not know what business intelligence they need. The number of the traditional
electronic tables is increasing with the requests for change in the
Small/medium-sized enterprises; moreover, these tables need many staff to make and
translate to the decision makers makes decision. In addition, most of the decision
makers are afraid of the huge volume of data and information, so they use their
experience to make decisions instead of the more technical method.
Furthermore, there are many barriers which restrain the implementation of business
intelligence, like the cost, results and time. This aspect is one of my research
questions.
1.3 Purpose of the research
The Aberdeen Organization, which is a market analysis group survey of 650
small/medium-sized enterprises, which aims to find out why they change the main
focus to the data management strategy, shows that 53% of enterprises believe that
curtail the time of finial customer acquire information. (Aberdeen Group, 2002)
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For my research area, I would like to do some research on the current condition of
Chinese Small/medium-sized enterprises’ use of business intelligence, the enter
barriers to business intelligence implementation for small medium-size enterprises in
China and how to solve the problems to make business intelligence help the
small/medium-sized enterprises to develop. The X shipping agent company will be
employed to find how business intelligence is implemented.
1.4 Objective of the research
To identify theoretically what business intelligence is, including the definition and
theories, introduce some current tools and the importance of business intelligence
used in Chinese small/medium-sized enterprises. By researching the industry
condition and environment of the case company, it aims to work out the feasibility of
BI use.
To investigate the current use of business intelligence and the main barriers to
business intelligence entry. By using interviews with shareholders and employees, to
find how business intelligence is used in the X Company.
To determine the development of the business intelligence condition in the case
company focused on data collection on the topic.
To make recommendations regarding business intelligence in the case company. An
evaluation and discussion of the findings of the questionnaire and interview will be
given by using both a qualitative and qualitative analysis approach.
1.5Research question
What is the current condition of business intelligence usage in
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small/medium-sized enterprises?
What are the main barriers to business intelligence operation in
small/medium-sized enterprises?
How to solve the barriers?
How do business intelligence tools help the routine work and what are the
benefits?
Find out the future prospects and offer recommendations.
1.6 Structure of the research
The research presented the different definitions of business intelligence and
implementation tools in the literature review. It aimed to make clear concept of
business intelligence. And also the use condition in the Small/medium-sized
enterprises of the world, especially in China, also presented in the literature review
chapter. Question and interview were designed and respond by one hundred owners
of Small/medium-sized enterprises to get the primary data. Furthermore the data and
information was processed by SPSS, a data statistics tools. In addition, after the
discussion of the results, recommendations were given at the end of the research.
1.7 Significance of the research
Business intelligence is a new information technique. To use in the
Small/medium-sized enterprises is the worldwide trend. Therefore doing research in
this academic area is important, but there are rare researches and works for Chinese
Small/medium-sized enterprises. For this research, it aims to do some basic study of
business intelligence to give the primary and general knowledge of business
intelligence.
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Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.1 introduction
This chapter is a literature review of the subject of business intelligence and also
some issues related to the theme. The chapter will begin with the definition of
business intelligence in the general consideration at present, followed by some
classic concepts mentioned previously by some experts. Moreover, after the
definitions, it presents the detailed implementation of business intelligence which
includes data warehousing that it is not a project but a process, data mining, which
means a process of discovering the useful information from different databases.
OLAP (On-Line Analytical Processing) is an approach to quickly answer
multi-dimensional queries and information.
In the later sections, it deals with the decision supporting system and executive
information system and also competitive intelligence which give the consideration of
how business intelligence works in the competitive environment. Lastly, some the
problems which some experts claim can affect business intelligence use are also
mentioned.
2. 2 The Definition of Business Intelligence
The business intelligence (BI) concept is raised by the Gartner Group at 1996. The
group gives the definition of business intelligence to describe a series of concepts
and methods. It supports the business decisions made by using information analysis
support systems. Biere’s (2003) BI technology which includes data collection,
management and analysis supplies the enterprise with useful information that is
delivered to the different departments.
Williams (2007) claimed that, with the research developed, a more concrete state is
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working out for business intelligence which is a tool which aims to help the manager
to make intelligent marketing decisions by analysis the existing data from enterprises
as useful information and knowledge. The data mentioned before includes two parts:
internal data, such as orders, stock, deal statements and external data; for example,
the information for customers, suppliers and competitors, industry environment and
government policy. Business intelligence helps the decision making not only at the
operational level but also the strategic level. To transfer the data to knowledge, some
main tools, which include data warehousing, OLAP (On-Line Analytical
Processing) and data mining, should be used. Therefore, considered as a technique
perspective, business intelligence is not a new technology but some tools mentioned
before are multipurpose use.
Generally considered, Howson (2007) mentioned in his book that business
intelligence is a processing of business information management and aims to make
all of the operators from different levels make effective and beneficial decisions by
receiving knowledge and insight. Business intelligence achieves the combination of
software, hardware and the application of services, and the component elements are
data warehousing, OLAP and data mining.
Therefore, it is better to consider business intelligence as a project solution. The key
issues of business intelligence is collecting data and ordering them after the
processing of extraction, transformation and load. All useful knowledge is input into
a particular database to show to the manager to supply the decision making.
‘Business Intelligence is a concept of applying a set of technologies to turn data into
meaningful information. With Business Intelligence Applications, large amounts of
data originating in many different formats (spreadsheets, relationship databases, web
logs) can be consolidated and presented to key business analysts.., and armed with
timely, intelligent information that is easily understood, and the business analyst is
enabled to affect change and develop strategies to drive higher profits.’ (IBM, 2005)
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Bergerou (2005) defined business intelligence as a process which aims to improve
the enterprises’ competitive advantage by intelligence using the existing data. The
aspects of business intelligence include data collecting, filtering the useless
information and decision supporting by data analysis and evaluating and analyzing
the risk and current status.
Siebei (2005) defined business intelligence as a kind of solution which integrates the
data from enterprises’ sources and turns them into the key insights that make the
managers, directors and operators improve their business performance. He also
makes an assumption about the next generation business intelligence that comprises a
mission-critical architecture that is scaled to handle the largest data volumes and
delivers critical information to tens of thousands of concurrent users across the
enterprise.
Cognos (2004) defined Business Intelligence as event driven. ‘Event Drive BI
monitors three classes of events in operational and Business Intelligence content –
notification, performance and operation events – looking for key changes. Having
detected changes, event-driven BI then notifies and alerts decision-makers, keeping
them informed and up-to-minute. This personalized information can be pushed to
decision makers no matter where they, enabling them to make timely and effective
decisions.’
Moss and Hoberman [(2005) described Business Intelligence as ‘the processes,
technologies, and tools needed to turn data into information, information into
knowledge and knowledge into plans that drive profitable business action. BI
encompasses data warehousing, business analytics tools and content/knowledge
management’.
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2.3 The Framework for Business Intelligence Systems
Larson (2008) mentioned that the business intelligence framework is through
recognizing and understanding the data flow in the system and data application
process in the company to support business intelligence system application. Figure
2.1 shows a complete business intelligence system:
Routine
operation
system
Electronic
business
system
Back-ground
process
system
Foreground
process
system
Figure 2.1 business intelligence framework (source: Larson, 2008)
Generally, Curtis, and Cobham (2008) said that the contribution of business
intelligence systems is divided into three steps:
1. Recognize and define the data source. The data of business intelligence comes
from many data sources which include the interior and exterior of the
organizations, such as ordering information, customers’ information, product
information, store information and financial information.
2. Processing data integration and store management.
3. Data analysis and contribution model. The aim of business intelligence is to
award a higher mercantile rate of return, operate the analysis tools which are
Data integrate
External data
Data store Decision making
Office system
BI tools
Analysis software
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supplied by business intelligence to analyse the data and transfer data into
information and knowledge.
2.4 The Implementation of Business Intelligence
2.4.1Data Warehouse
The expert Bill Inmon (2002) mentioned in his book ‘Building the Data
Warehouse’ that a data warehouse is a data set of subject oriented, integrated,
non-volatile and time variant information, which is used for the decision making
support.
Subject oriented: data from data warehouses are organized by one or more
oriented subjects which differed from operating the type of data
organization.
Integrated: data from data warehouses are processed by decentralized data
by system processing, collecting and arranging them based on the data
extraction and clearance. It aims to eliminate the difference from the source
data and makes all of the data from the data warehouse involved in the
enterprise.
Non-volatile: the key role of the data warehouse is to support the enterprise
decision analysis. The main use of data warehouses is data retrieval. Data
which are input into the data warehouse is reserved for a long time. In the
data warehouse, most of the operations are retrieve and load but rarely alter
and delete.
Time variant: data from data warehouses always contain historical
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information. The system records the information, including every stage of
enterprise development. Through this information, the owner of the
enterprise and researchers can analyse the development course and predict
the prospects.
Inmon (2002) claimed that data warehouses are a kind of information management
technique, whose main object is to support the management decision by reasonable
and comprehensive information management. Generally, data warehouses transfer
data to the business information to supply help for the enterprise to resolve problems.
Considered from the technical perspective, data from data warehouses are classified,
balanced, coordinated and edited which aims to supply useful information to the
different departments of the enterprise. It is designed for ultimate clients to process
information. Users could find the particular data which are directed at any
organization or enterprise to record and analyse the market, product and customers.
Compared with other previous methods, the advantages are that the data warehouse
is integrated in a high level and could supply relevant information consider ing
the overall situation.
Pressman (2006) believed that data warehouse is not static but dynamic. The
dynamic process is based on the enterprise management system. The system could
predict the benefits, manage and analyse the risk, analyse the market, support the
plan and strengthen the customers’ program and marketing program. It is not a
product but a process. Data warehouses request to combine all the data to transfer to
the useful information or knowledge to support the company by considering the
principles of the company and inside and outside data resources. It is an endless
process. During the operation, people should input and update all data and contact
company with information uninterrupted.
Kimball (2002) said in his book that the core of data warehouses is the current
detailed data. It affects the operations of data warehouses, and stands for the whole
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company which is organized by different application. Current detailed data could be
considered as an exact instantaneous value. Each of them is a cell of a data
warehouse and contributes to the whole data warehouse. It needs to be updated by
day, week or month. With the time going, the current data became the past data and
could be analyzed and processed to support the decision making.
2.4.2 Data Mining
Han and Kamber (2006) stated that data mining, also called Knowledge Discovery
in Database, KDD, is the process of collecting valid, novel, potential information
from a mass of data. Generally, data mining is a process of finding and collecting
useful information and knowledge from data warehouses. The data mining process
can be divided into seven steps: (1) data order (2) data integrated (3) data choice (4)
data transfer (5) data mining (6) mode analysis (7) knowledge statement.
Data process, integrate and select
Figure 2.2 data mining process (source: Han and Kamber, 2006)
Users interface
Module evaluate
Data mining engine
Data store and serve
Knowledge store
Data store Data warehouse Internet Other store methods
Users
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Hand (2001) defined six uses of data mining:
Classification: ordering non-classified data to the particular cluster which is
classified in the data warehouse.
Estimation: it is different from the discrete variable output of classification
that is successive value and also differed from a certain number of clusters
to the non-certain.
Prediction: generally, prediction is supported by classification and
estimation. It is predicted by the mode which is contributed to by
classification and estimation.
Affinity grouping or association rules
Clustering: it is considered as grouping the relevant record and without
exactly clustering.
Description and Visualization
2.4.3 On-line Analytical Processing
On-line Analytical Processing (OLAP) is defined by Codd (1993) as occurring
through professional data search engines, with the help of direct data interfaces to
unify public applied logic for answering the complex retrieval requests which are
raised by the non-professional data user. It is a kind of software technique which
operates the resources stored in the static data warehouse. By a quick, unanimous and
communicated interface, the same data were shown in different ways to support the
users like analysts and managers grasping the useful data. There are three main
elements of OLAP: 1. Dynamic multidimensional analysis. 2. Executable complex
calculation 3. Time guide process ability. The most useful feature of OLAP is the
ability to process multidimensional data; in other words, OLAP can collect and
process all sorts of dimensions of vertical or horizontal data. With the experience of
OLAP increasing, a decision maker not only possesses the ability to use data but
also accumulates the ability to process data.
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According to Wrembel and Koncilia (2006), OLAP is the software technique for
sharing multi-dimensional information and answering particular questions by
on-line data transactions. It allows the decision makers to observe deeply the data by
considered majority possibility to access. Decision data is multi-dimensional data
and plays a core role in the decisions.
Thomsen (2002) said that OLAP is designed for supporting complex analysis
operations, especially supporting decision makers and higher level managers. After
the automatic data process, OLAP shows the intuitionistic and understandability
result to the decision makers to make decisions and grasp the condition of the
company, marketing and further plans of the company.
Wang (2007) have shown the advantages of OLAP:
1. Successful OLAP could improve the efficiency of the organization. The flexibility
of OLAP expresses that the users could complete the work by their own master. They
do not need to rely on the IT experts. They can build a model by themselves to avoid
irrelevant problems and get better control and reflect the company strategy
information.
2.. An IT developer also could get the benefits from OLAP. By some specialized
software designed for OLAP, the IT developer could design applications for the
customers faster and better.
2.4.4 Intelligence Decision Supporting System
Sprague and Carlson (1982) give the definition of an intelligence decision supporting
system (IDSS): it is the combination of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and a decision
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support system. By using the expert system technique, it makes a decision supporting
the system’s effectual exploitation of human knowledge, such as the sub-support
decision system of knowledge of description of decision question, processing of
decision making and logical solving questions.
The concept of an intelligence decision supporting system was raised by the expert
Bonczek in the 1980s. Its functions are not only to process quantitative problems
but also qualitative problems. The core of the IDSS is to make DSS have more
artificial intelligence with a combination of AI and other relevant disciplines.
The frame of Intelligence decision supporting system: compared with the
traditional DSS, IDSS has two more parts which are the knowledge base and
inference engine. While the Language System (LS) and Problem Solving System
(PSS) in operating, IDSS has become more complete and intelligent.
Intelligent Man Machine Interface: it can express decision questions and target
in the human word or close to the human word. It improved the performance of
the human-computer interface.
Problem Solve System (PSS): it plays a key role in the DSS and connects
humans, computers and resources. (1) The Language System: transfer the
problems in a way in which problem language analyzers can recognize the
structured, semi-structured and non-structured questions. (2) PSS is not only
recognising, analysing problems and designing solution plans but also finding
data, models, methods and knowledge to support the problem solving.
A knowledge base system includes three parts: a knowledge base
management system, knowledge base and inference engine. There are two
functions of knowledge base management systems, which are the answer to
the request for knowledge base increase, delete and alter and answer the
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requests of problems analysis and judgment in the process of
decision-making.
A knowledge base is the core of a knowledge base system. In the knowledge
base, it stores professional decision knowledge, experience and some
knowledge of particular problems. Knowledge expressed is the main
research question. It is the process of symbolic knowledge. The
representation of knowledge is fully affected by system usability and
universality.
An inference engine is a set of programs which aims to process customers’
problems with the help of a knowledge base.
Sol (1987) have gave the characteristic of an intelligence decision supporting
system
Based on the mature technology, it is easy to contribute a banausic system.
Make full use of various levels of information resources.
Based on the expression of roles, clients can easily use.
Strongly Modularization properties and a low cost of system development.
Each part of the system can combine flexibility, realizing a strong function
and easy maintenance.
A system can quickly adopt advanced technical support, such as AI.
Bidgoli (1998) claimed that operating efficiency of Intelligence decision
supporting system
Because, in the operation of IDSS, there are many resources that need to be
processed, the efficiency of IDSS could be lower than some basic systems.
Considering the environment of IDSS use, it is operated higher on the span and
lowers in the running frequency so that lower efficiency is valued.
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2.4.5 Executive Information System
Rolph and Bartram (1992) defined Executive Information System (EIS): this is a
kind of special information system which is designed for higher level managers and
operators. EIS could help the managers get information faster and wider. Firstly, EIS
is a condition of the organization report system which could supply rapid, usable and
direct integrated information and also predict and control the elements of success.
Moreover, EIS is an interpersonal communication system. Managers could give the
orders, action requests, discuss the work distribution, control the results and inspect
the system.
Performance management
Profiting from personal computers and software development, EIS has evolved to the
enterprise information system which is also called a performance measurement
system, which could supply information to more people in the organization.
Kaplan and Norton (1996) has given the notion of a Balanced Scorecard is the
extension of performance management. It is raised by Kaplan and Norton
considering the researches of many case studies in 1992. The notion of a Balanced
Scorecard aimed to request the balance and find an equilibrium state between long
term and short term enterprise goals, financial and non-financial data, leading and
falling behind the index and internal and external enterprise performance.
EIS makes manage with the help of information tools, through the simple diagrams
to master the information needed in the decision making, to improve the accuracy of
the decision-making to achieve the goals of increasing profits.
Olve and Sjöstrand (2002) said Characteristic of EIS in their book that:
1. Using the data warehouse
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2. Using data mining
3. Flexible data provision ability
4. Give the resource of information response
5. Operation of the DSS and AI
6. Access many kinds of information which include environmental information of
the organization.
7. The function of information retrieval and process model
8. Simple and convenient interface
9. Strong communication capacity
10. Strong information process capacity of the mass media
11. Not only support decision making but also improve the efficiency of routine
work
2.4.6 Competitive Intelligence
Murphy (2005) defined Competitive Intelligence (CI): it is research about the
competitive environment, competitor, competitive condition and competitive strategy.
CI is not only a process (process of collecting and analysis competitive information),
but also a product (intelligence and strategy).
Generally, CI is the action and capability of an organization perceiving the change of
the external environment and giving the response to make the organization adapt to
environmental changes. Competitive intelligence is information research about the
competition environment, competitors, and competitive strategy. It is the product of
intense market competition and the development of social informatization. It is the
basic of enterprise development and also the extension of intelligence research
Kahaner (1996) said the contents of CI include competitive intelligence information
collection and analysis.
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1. Understanding the nature of the competition in the industry, including
competition, competition sites.
2. Understand competitors, including the recognition competitors, collect
competitor intelligence, conclude the competition strategy of competitors.
3. Analysis competitive condition, including SWOT analysis and predicting future
trends.
4. Drawing up a competitive strategy and competitive intelligence application.
The Society of Competitive Intelligence Professional (SCIP) defined that CI is a
comprehensive testing process of the whole competitive environment and
competitors. By using legal methods to collect and analyse information related to the
advantages, disadvantages and opportunities, CI could support decision making
directly or indirectly considering the enterprise competitive strategy. It inclues three
core functions which are the early warning system (Monitor, track, expectations);
decision support (competition means, production decision, new market exploration
and technology research and development); Learning system (reference, comparison,
management methods and tools and avoiding rigidity).
2.4.7 Data Market
Thierauf (2001) has given the definition data market is a platform which support
enterprises, organizations and governments to use data mining from a group of data.
The key point of the data market is to cater to the requests raised by some particular
professional users, such as data which is requested from the enterprise and could be
retrieved from the customers’ database, suppliers’ database, market database and
even some more professional databases.
Thierauf (2001) also said that the data market aims to find the best customers’ group
to increase the response rate and decrease the acquisition cost by statistics and
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analyse the information from the data centre. The data market can classify the
customers by analysing the existing data. There are two benefits for the data market
application. Firstly, according to the different customers, the user of a data market
could provide the most appropriate marketing service. Moreover, it is good for the
company to make different market positioning and marketing planning for different
products.
2.5 Business Intelligence implementation in the SMEs
There are misgivings which are considered by many SMEs in the business
intelligence application. But, in fact, whatever the company size, the enterprises all
need the support of effectual information in their operations, especially the
disadvantaged groups of SMEs. Therefore, as long as suitable methods are used,
business intelligence could also get good results for SMEs.
Williams (2007) claimed that the key point of business intelligence is how to collect
data from sub-systems like EPR, SCM, CRM and analysis to find useful information
to help the enterprise. Generally, business intelligence success or not strongly relies
on the data and information collection and analysis situation. Therefore, it is easier to
get the most successful results than a large company so that SMEs have small data
size and easy to data analysis and integrate.
Fuld (1991) said that there are five successful elements whereby SMEs use business
intelligence:
1 internal consensus of the enterprise;
2 the integrity of the data;
3 perfect contribution plans;
4 professional technique team;
5 possess a platform which is perfect in shape and function and easy to explore.
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Most of the SMEs have less focus on industry and limited resources so that the tools
which SMEs use should have full functions and are flexible to suit the different
requests from SMEs. Furthermore, the interface of business intelligence tools should
be understandability and visual to make it easy for the clients to learn. With the
SMEs’ development, the data and information are increasing day by day, so that
business intelligence tools being updated and escalated is necessary. Moreover, for
SMEs, a business intelligence system could expand with the company’s business
growth to counteract the cost of business intelligence applications and thus giving up
the use of business intelligence.
2.6 Business Intelligence Use in China
According to the definition of the report of Chinabizintel (2008), they have made
three standards of SMEs. The number of employees is under 2000, the sum or
volume of business is under 300 million RMB and the total assets are under 400
million RMB. The government gives the data up to the end of 2006. There are more
than 42 million SMEs which include all personnel and groups engaged in economic
activity. The SMEs occupied 99.6% of the amount of enterprises, but the rate of large
companies is only 0.4%. The SMEs cover 75% of the occupied population, 60% of
the amount of salerooms and nearly 60% of the GDP. Therefore, the informatization
level of the SMEs reflects the condition of Chinese enterprises’ informatization. The
report shows that: in Chinese SMEs, more than 76% set information department;
76.63% has the complete process of data and information management; more than 10%
of companies set the position of CIO. The most widely used system is office
automation system. Secondly, more than half of SMEs are operating financial
management information systems. Moreover, a human resource management system
is used by around 30% of companies, but there are rarely companies that use
business intelligence.
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2.7 The Necessity of Chinese SMEs Implementing
Business Intelligence
Jia and Zhu (2008) mentioned in their article that: according to the size of the SMEs,
there are too many pressures for survival, so that the SMEs should pay more
attention to the data of the enterprise’s operation. The key point of SMEs’ survival is
that the decision makers could make suitable decisions at the right time. Whatever
the information age develops, a timely, accurate and comprehensive grasp of the
relevant data is the basis of decision making.
However, most of the Chinese SMEs are developed as family-run enterprises. The
amount of the SMEs is huge and the business field is very wide so that the
management of the SMEs becomes chaotic and disordered. There are three reasons
why SMEs’ managers should use business intelligence: 1 data distributed, data is
distributed in the different departments and subsystems. 2 data chaos, according to
the mass data and information from different departments, the decision makers are
difficult to integrate and analyse. The core data are too easy to miss. 3 less support
for the decision making, most of the SMEs decisions are made by experience from
the managers. Scientific and effectual decisions support should be use in the decision
making process.
Because of the size of the SMEs, the managers should pay more attention to every
customer, cost and profile, the store of products and service so that SMEs are in
greater need of application of business intelligence than large enterprises.
2.8 The factors of the business intelligence
implementation in Chinese SMEs
Huang and Bao (2008) described that general consideration of the business
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intelligence is divided into three levels to process the data: 1 to tabulate the
current and historical data. This step of the work is always achieved by query
and report builders; 2 deep process of the crossing data resources. It can also be
completed by query and report builders; 3 to analyse the influence of previous
work on the current situation and to predict the future of what can be achieved
from the current work. In this step, the need for data from external sources is
increased in the query process. Before the business intelligence implementation,
the decision makers should have a clear recognition of that 1) what is most
needed to be achieved from business intelligence? 2) what is the mercantile rate
of return and the return on the investment? 3) does the company have enough
budget for business intelligence implementation? 4) what is the achievement of
business intelligence implementation?
Luo (2008) said in his article that the nature of business intelligence is a kind of
management which contributes on the basis of their being enough data about the
enterprise. The annual accumulation of the data from the company is 3 years on
average. It is easy to achieve successful business intelligence if the company has
enough structured information and data and some well operated system, such as
ERP, but if the company does not have a clear data resource, it is hard to launch
business intelligence.
2.9 The Difficulties of Business Intelligence
Implementation in Chinese SMEs
As the most useful and hot spot technique, Feng (2007) claimed that business
intelligence is not widely used in SMEs. The difficulties of implementation are
in eight aspects:
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1. The high cost of business intelligence software. For example, the famous
software SAS9 which cost 6000 engineers was developed in four years and
cost two billion dollars so that the price of the software means that the SMEs
cannot afford it.
2. The same as the first problem, the high cost of servers for data storage. It is
necessary to have a data server when implementing business intelligence and
most of the servers cost millions of dollars. It is obvious that the SMEs
cannot afford it either.
3. The business intelligence system is hard to operate. According to the system,
it involves the technique of business management, statistics, data mining etc,
and needs a professional director to operate it. Hiring or training is another
investment of the company.
4. The results of business intelligence implementation are not prominent and
cannot achieve success immediately. There is a general misunderstanding that it
can increase the profile in a short time after the business intelligence
implementation. But, in fact, there are many elements affecting it.
5. It is very weak in terms of the popularity of business intelligence implementation.
According to the different kinds of industry, the products of business intelligence
from different software companies have weak popularity; for instance, there are
some compatible problems when the client company uses a data store produced
by Oracle and wants to use the IBM tool, Analysis Service 2005. SMEs always
need flexible choices regarding business intelligence tools, so that the popularity
becomes an important barrier to implementation.
6. It lacks autonomy in the software update. With the development of business
knowledge and computer techniques, the software should be updated, but it relies
on the software house. Therefore, the condition of that could lead the SMEs to
continue investing in the software and afford the burden. Many SMEs are afraid
of the long standing burden, and thus drop the plan of business intelligence
implementation.
7. It is a long term application of business intelligence. Considered as the
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reporting from SAP and Oracle, the implementation of business intelligence
can be completed in three to six months, accumulated with training staff and
software running over a period, it needs much more time in use. Most of the
SMEs find it hard to afford such a long period without output.
8. There are some barriers to the connection with other companies which do not
use business intelligence. SMEs are not operating separately and they need
to cooperate with other companies. If the cooperators are not using business
intelligence, there could be many problems in the operating process.
2.10 A simple module of business intelligence based on
the open technique
Huang and Bao (2008) have shown a simple of business intelligence module in their
article:
Figure 2.3 a simple of business intelligence (source: Huang and Bao, 2008))
The arrow in the picture means the operating direction, like the staff input the data to
the data store. A decision package includes different computing methods about data
mining. A knowledge store includes the assist knowledge in business aspects which
internet
Knowledge store
Data mining engine
Manager
Data warehouse
Decision package
Foreground display
Client investigate Staff Data store
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aims to guide the retrieve and evaluate tasks. The function of a data store is to
integrate data that means translating the different data resources, such as data from
Excel, Access and SQLServer into a united data form. The core of the module is the
engine of the data mining. Its responsibility is to use different methods to operate and
analyse the data, and then gives the results and suggestions to the managers.
Operation process
1. Acquire the original data. Firstly, the staff put the current primary business data
into the data store; secondly, information staff put the feedback information and
other relevant information which are found from internet retrieve and telephone
or email data collecting methods in the data store.
2. The preparation of data mining. Managers or professional engineers integrate
data that means translating different data resources, such as data from Excel,
Access and SQLServer into a united data form and removing useless information.
All of the information is put in the data store and prepares the data mining.
3. Operators process the data with the interface of the software and get the result.
After the result analysis and working out the suggestions, finally, the results and
suggestions are shown to the decision makers.
The advantage of this simple module
1. Lower cost. The business intelligence system designed based on this module can
be updated online so that the core system could be designed simply, which
decreases the cost of development.
2. Well targeted. Since this module is designed for SMEs’ business intelligence
implementation, it could be more pertinent and suitable for SMEs, and also the
application cycle could be short and effective.
3. Easy to operate. There is a clear design for business intelligence so that managers
and staff can operate it easily. Also it can be easily connected to other
32
cooperative companies.
33
Chapter 3 Methodology
The research methodology aims to design a plan to help the data and information to
be collected, organized and integrated and also reach the results (Kumar 2005). This
chapter will present the definitions of the types of research approach, which are the
inductive approach and the deductive approach. Then, the research strategies will be
described. Moreover, it is will give an overview of the two methods for collecting
data and information, which are the quantitative approach and the qualitative
approach, and the reason why this research chose both approaches. At the end of this
chapter, there will be an analysis of the reasons why the questions were designed for
the questionnaire and interview.
3.1 Research approach:
The research approach adopted for this topic will be both inductive and deductive,
which could lead the research results towards being not only universal but also
specific.
Considering the research questions and the objective of the dissertation, an inductive
approach will be adopted, which is a good method for collecting and analyzing the
relevant data (Robson, 2002). Charmaz’s (2006) research focused on explaining the
inductive approach. There were two main points which are: 1 ‘it uses a grounded
theory approach to the analysis of data and to the generation of theory,’ which was
first raised by Glaser and Strauss (1967), and is considered as strong in terms of
theory to generated data. They provide insightful empirical generalizations, but little
theory; and 2 ‘an inductive strategy of linking data and theory is typically associated
with a qualitative research approach, inductive approach is not only does much
qualitative research not generate theory, but also theory is often used at the very least
34
as a background to qualitative investigations’. (Bryman, 2008)
According to the business intelligence implementation barriers, primary and
secondary research for developing the theories and practical situations based on the
data collection and analysis, is necessary. However, the limitation of the inductive
approach is that most of the conclusions worked out from inductive research are
based on previous or particular data collected and analysed, which means that the
conclusions are often outdated (Robson, 2002).
However, there is another approach called the deductive approach which means that
the theories and hypothesis need to be developed by the research questions tested
(Robson, 2002). It represents the commonest view of the relationship between theory
and social research (Bryman, 2008). At the base of the previous research and
theoretical considerations, there is an outline of some reasonable hypotheses in a
particular domain which needs to be subjected to empirical scrutiny. There is a
further point of view that the deductive process is working in a linear way, which
means that every step of the process followed the previous step in a clear and logical
sequence (Robson, 2002). The sequence can be drawing up one by one, as shown in
figure 3.1:
1. Theory
2. Hypothesis
3. Data collection
4. Findings
5. Hypotheses confirmed or rejected
6. Revision of theory
Figure 3.1 deductive approach (source: Robson, 2002)
Considered with this dissertation, many researches and theories exist so that
deductive research approach would be used.
35
3.2 Research strategy: quantitative research and
qualitative research
There are many authors working on the methodological issues to find how to
distinguish between quantitative and qualitative research. Both quantitative and
qualitative research approaches belong to the sociology research method. They are
correlating to each other and also complement each other. They cannot be considered
as separate.
Quantitative research is a research process that collects data and information which
expresses by numbers and processes the data in quantification, tests, analyzes and
gives the results. The core of quantitative research is measuring facts by numerical
symbols. (Bryman, 2008) The quantitative research is one of the most important
processes and methods that aims to define theory or find useful conclusions existing
in some subjects through numerical analysis. Quantitative research is working for
some characteristics which means collecting some numeral data expressed by the
research object to compare with some standards to find some regularity and theory.
According to this research aspect, it could be considered widely in industry so that
the quantitative research approach is needed. Data from different
Small/medium-sized enterprises could reflect general information to help the
research work. That is for three reasons: 1 measurement can delineate fine
differences on the basis of the characteristic of the question; 2 measurement shows
the yardstick for making such distinctions; 3 the measurement provides a more
precise conclusion.
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3.3 The reliability and validity of the quantitative
research approach
There are three aspects of reliability: stability (the data collected from the measure
should be stable so that, sometimes, the single difference can be ignored); internal
reliability (the answers from the respondents could be affected by the questions
settled so that the questions need to have an internal connection). There are five
validity aspects, which are the face validity, concurrent validity, predictive validity,
construct validity and convergent validity.
Qualitative research is to research the nature of the object. To be more specific, it
involves using induce and deduce, synthesis and analysis, abstract and generalization
methods to process a majority of data and information and then conclude the nature
of the object and show the inherent law.
Qualitative research is always using interaction with the object. To recognize a
phenomenon or a theory, the first step is to recognize the nature and characteristics of
the object; therefore, the qualitative approach is the basic and most essential research
analysis process. There are two different standards of qualitative research approach:
one is that the result of the research is a qualitative description; the other is that it
contributes on the basis of a strict quantitative approach to qualitative research.
Considered with science recognize process, every research and analysis is working to
find the differences from the nature of the objects, and then to research the objects
from the quantitative perspective. With numerical analysis, the further research could
be qualitative research and find the precise results.
3.4 Methods of investigation
The aim of research is to find the opinions and recognitions of shipping agent
37
practitioners and the current business intelligence operation condition which could
supply useful data and information for analysis and find the general problems of
business intelligence usage in Small/medium-sized enterprises with working out the
solution and recommendations. According to the research questions outlined, this
dissertation will use a questionnaire survey, interview and case study methods to
collect the data and process the analysis.
3.5 Questionnaire survey:
One of the main methods used to collect data and information for this study is the
questionnaire. It is a kind of quantitative research approach which can obtain a great
amount of data and information from a wide variety of sources within a short period
of time (Mcneill, 1985). Questionnaires are one of the most useful instruments for
collecting data which are completed by respondents as a social survey (Bryman,
2008).
Questionnaires need a high capability, like discipline in the selection of the questions,
in question writing, and in the design, piloting, distribution and return of the
questionnaires (Judith, 2005). Bryman claimed in his book that the most common
form is the mail or postal questionnaire. Since I am studying in the UK and going
back to China would waste more time and lead to a lack of meetings with my
supervisor, I decided that all of the questionnaires should be sent and returned via
E-mail, which could be a fast way to contact the target group and the best method for
collecting data and information (Bryman, 2008).
Focused on this dissertation, it aimed to research business intelligence
implementation in small/medium-sized enterprises in China. The small/medium-sizes
enterprises could be many different companies in the different industries so that the
data and information could be collected widely. According to the request for
38
collection, questionnaires should be the best approach to gather what the dissertation
needs.
3.5.1 Sampling of the questionnaires
Sampling is a very important aspect in the general and enquires in the questionnaires
(Bryman, 2008). It is described as the ‘closely linked to the external validity or
generalizability of the findings’. Sampling is affected by the population which is the
research target group. Considering this research, I am going to select the owners of
Chinese Small/medium-sized enterprises, as many as I can find from different
industries. It aims to avoid as far as possible the sampling errors caused by the
sample that is chosen and cannot be eliminated (Bryman, 2008). Sample size is
affected by the considerations of time and cost. Therefore, the choice of sample size
represents a compromise between the time and cost and also the research precision
and a majority of issues should be considered (Bryman, 2008). Due to the limited
research span, I made the sample size 100, which can be easily controlled and most
of the questionnaires can be completed. However, there is a higher response and
better understanding than when self-administered questionnaires were sent via Email
(Frey et al, 1995).
3.5.2 The structure of the questionnaires design
Barribeau et al (2005) claimed that, in the questionnaire design, researchers should
consider two important problems which are: firstly how to get data and information
from the respondents, such as the oral, written and electronic method; secondly, there
is the form of questions on the questionnaire, which could be open questions or
39
close-ended questions.
Moreover, Robson (2002) presents the general structure of the questionnaires which
consist of three major parts:
The introduction: to present the aim of the questionnaires to the respondents.
It must be shown to be reasonable and persuasive to the respondents to lead
the sample which I selected to respond to the questionnaire.
The main body: the content of the questionnaire. It includes all kinds of
questions which point to the answers that I need. This kind of question will
cover the facts, opinions, attitudes, knowledge, future behaviour, and so on.
The personal information about the sample: to collect the basic data about
the respondents, which usually consists of their name, address, occupation,
telephone number, email, and so on.
The questionnaire was designed for the owners of Small/medium-sized enterprises to
collect primary data to answer the research questions which were the current
condition of business intelligence use in Small/medium-sized enterprises, the main
barriers to business intelligence implementation and the influence of business
intelligence in the routine work.
The questionnaire was organized in three sections.
Section 1: The general condition of organizational and business intelligence
Q1 aimed to find which industries the respondents are working in; Q2 wanted to
know the size of the company; Q3 asked about the profile which the sample
company earns every year; Q4 talked about the nature of the company. These four
questions were designed for gathering general information about the company and it
can show the universality of the questionnaire.
40
Q5 was designed to know about the budget for IT. This is an important point to learn
about the general attitudes about IT of the company. Most of the Small/medium-sized
enterprises have a small budget, it is an important barrier known from the literature
review. The rates of the IT activities can show the current condition of business
intelligence.
Q6 to Q8 were designed to explore the current use condition of business intelligence,
such as the current systems and tools used. Although there was small use of business
intelligence, I still asked for the current use which aims to establish the most useful
aspect and can help the business intelligence implementation.
Q9 was designed to establish the position of the respondents. The higher the position
of the respondents, the more reliable the data and information I can get. Q10 leaded
the respondents to give a description about themselves.
Section 2: the attitude towards business intelligence implementation
In this section, I asked all the questions in the form of level of agreement or
disagreement. The author of the ‘Social Research Methods’, Bryman, said that the
most important advantage is that all of the questions can be pro-coded, thus making
the data and information process and analysis by computer an easy task (Bryman,
2008). This section aimed to know what preparation the companies undertook
regarding the current condition of and main barriers to business intelligence
implementation.
Q1 was designed to explore the attitudes of the company manager. The attitude of the
manager is the most important element which influences the business intelligence
implementation. Managers can decide whether to use business intelligence or not and
the level of investing in business intelligence. The recognition level of the concept of
the business intelligence is the second most important element, which the managers
41
known. The more knowledge the managers have, the greater the possibility of
business intelligence implementation.
Q2 was designed to know about the action of the managers engaged in business
intelligence, such as participating in meetings, supervising and offering suggestions.
The action of the manager could also reflect the attitude of business intelligence
implementation and speed up this process.
Q3 was designed to talk about supporting the implementation; for instance, the
supporting for budget and technique. This question reflects the objective element of
implementation. Costs and technique are the main barriers to business intelligence
being used in Chinese Small/medium-sized enterprises. Therefore, to find the
primary data about the company plans regarding business intelligence is necessary
and helpful.
Q4 was designed to explore the staff’s acceptance level about business intelligence.
Business intelligence implementation is a group action. It needs not only the
managers and information department but also other staff from different departments,
such as the sales department. This question can establish the degree of support for
business intelligence implementation.
Q5 was designed to establish the current condition of the company’s training of the
staff. According to the difficulty of using business intelligence tools, the use
capability of the staff is an important element that affects successful business
intelligence implementation, to see how the skills training of the staff could lead the
analyses of business intelligence implementation.
Q6 was designed to explore the knowledge of business intelligence among the
managers and who the current business intelligence implementation was planned. A
clear definition and knowledge could lead to better implementation and avoid
42
misunderstandings. The current plan could give general information about how
prepared the company is. The better the company is prepared, the better the results
could be for business intelligence implementation.
Q7 was designed to talk about data quality and resources. The key point of business
intelligence is the data. How clear, reliable and complete the data are can affect
whether the implementation is successful or not. A focus on the data quality could
reduce the risk and cost of business intelligence implementation. In addition, the data
is not only from the information department but also from other parts of the
company.
Q8 was designed to discuss the implementation tools and methods. According to the
majority of Small/medium-sized enterprises, different companies have to use
different tools and methods which could suit the particular company. There are too
many business intelligence tools which use different sales prices, use condition and
working results. To choose a suitable one is also an important element that affects the
implementation.
Section 3 the current BI system use condition
This section was designed for companies which have already used some business
intelligence system. The questions in this part could reflect the current use condition
and problems which aims to give suggestions after the data analysis.
Q1 was designed to explore the quality of the reporting and recommendations. The
aim of business intelligence implementation is to help the companies to increase the
efficiency of their work and develop the quality of the management, so that knowing
the information precision, demand and response speed can help the data analysis of
the quality of business intelligence implementation.
Q2 was designed to explore the characteristics of business intelligence systems,
43
which include being valid, flexible and easy to use and access. Whether business
intelligence implementation is successful or not is, most of the time, affected by the
fit of the company so that discussing the characteristics of the current system could
help to improve the business intelligence tools.
Q3 was designed to explore the results and influence of business intelligence. The
final aim of business intelligence is to get good results to speed up the company’s
efficiency and develop the management so that settling this question could help the
research to find and develop the business intelligence implementation.
Q4 was designed to explore the development and improvement degree of business
intelligence implementation. This is the feedback on business intelligence
implementation and it could display whether the results are good or not. If the result
is good, it can give the motivation and confidence to other companies which are not
implementing business intelligence; it the result is not good, it can be analyzed and
suggestions made for improvement.
Obviously, there were still some limitations to the questionnaire. Firstly, it cannot
prompt precise answers from the respondents, so I should allow enough time to let
the simple group answer the questionnaire. According to the personal knowledge
about business intelligence and the development of business intelligence, the scope
and depth of the question was limited.
3.6 Interview
The other data collection method for the study was the interview, which was a typical
qualitative research approach.
The interview research approach is a kind of data and information collection method
44
where the interviewer and interviewee are face to face and having a conversation for
a particular purpose. It is different from daily conversation. Interviews have two
characteristics: 1. particular purpose. Interview questions are always focused on one
aspect that is to know some condition and acquire data and information. 2 leading
interactive. Interviewers control the content, method and data type of the interview.
Generally, researchers raise the questions and the interviewees answer and give data
(Edenborough, 1996).
3.6.1 Types of interview approach
1. Structured interview: there are types of structured interviews: one is prepared by
the interviewers question by question and filled with the answers of the
interviewees. The other one is give the desired questions to the interviewees, and
they can answer the questions as they like.
2. Semi-structured interview: gives the general idea of the interviewees and the
researchers ask the questions in terms of the interview process. This approach is
considered as the most flexible and recipient to the interviewees.
3. Non-structured interview: there is not a steady question but only a research
interest. (Edenborough 1996)
Considered as this research, the questionnaire can collect primary data but the data
are general so that I decided to have an in-depth interview with an owner of an SME,
which could make the research more reliable. To acquire more useful data and have a
better interview, I decided to use semi-structured interviews.
3.6.2 Interview Sampling:
The interviewees chosen for the study were the shareholder of X, the shipping agent
45
who manages the enterprise and has the decision-making authority over the business
intelligence operation. He can give direct responses. In the choice of interview
method, I thought about face to face, telephone and computer assisted interview
methods. There are many advantages of telephone over face to face interviews. In
person interviews are always leading the respondents to reply to questions which
consider the characteristics of the interviewer, such like class and ethnicity, but,
according to the long distance telephone interview, it can remove these potential
biases (Bryman, 2008). Considering this research and according to my condition, a
telephone interview is more feasible which can be done long distance and is cheaper
than face to face interviews.
3.6.3 Interview question design
I designed three questions in the first section for the general information about the
interviewee and the company. They were: 1. a company description, such as the
products or services the company supplies and how the company operates; 2. the
occupation of the interviewee; 3 what the current problems the company faces.
The second section contained three questions to learn about the current condition of
business intelligence. The first question involved understanding the business
intelligence of the interviewee; the second question asked whether there were any
business intelligence tools used in the company or not; and the third question
discusses the budget for IT.
The third section contained four questions that talked about the barriers to business
intelligence use in the company. The first question aimed to explore the use condition
of business intelligence in this industry. The second question was designed to explore
the current problems of business intelligence implementation or why the company
did not implement business intelligence; the third question discussed the technical
46
barriers to business intelligence. Moreover, the fourth question was designed to
explore for how long the company can afford business intelligence implementation.
3.7 Case study
Case study involves taking the source for legal research, which processes a theme
from the whole point of view. Through the detailed survey of a case, it can help
researchers to understand a particular and individual situation. As for the advantages,
case study often involves doing research on a particular aspect so that can obtain
especially valued data and information and furthermore get the specific conclusion
from the case study. The object of the case study could be either a person or a group.
‘All the organizations have their common and their unique features. Case study
researchers aim to identify such features, to identify or attempt to identify the various
interactive processes at work to show how they affect the implementation of systems
and influence the way an organization functions.’ (Bell, 2005)
According to the above characteristics of case studies, I decided to choose the X
shipping agent company as a case company. There were some advantages to choose
this case company. Firstly, I was working in this industry and am familiar with the
operation process. Secondly, the owner of the case company is my father so that
there is no bias caused by business security problems.
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Chapter 4 Data analysis and findings
4.1 Introduction:
In this chapter, it processed after the questionnaire and interview complete. For the
questionnaire, I used the SPSS software which mentioned in the methodology. It
could translate the scattered data and information which collect and find from
questionnaires to the integrated and technically table and chart. It helped me on the
data analysis because of the clearly and visually.
4.2 Questionnaire condition of respondents
For the research, I sent one hundred questionnaires to the owners of SMEs which via
email. It was took about one week’s time of the questionnaires return back. There
were 95 questionnaires responded and answered, but four SMEs were not responding
the questionnaire back and also one uncomplete questionnaire were sent back with
the reason that the company refused to answer the questionnaire with business
security consideration. Therefore, there were 95 valid copies of questionnaire that
could be used to get findings and process data analysis.
4.3 Data analysis and finding of questionnaire
Section 1: The general condition of organization and business intelligence
Question 1: According to the aim of making this research much more popular,
question 1 supplied some of the main industries to choose. The figure 4.1 shows
below:
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Figure 4.1: which industry of respondents’ company works in
As Figure 4.1 shown, all the industries have been chosen by companies respond in
the questionnaire. And almost every industry is in the same percentage which could
prove the valid and popular of the questionnaire.
Question 2: there are different definitions of SMEs such as Europe defined the SMEs
have fewer than 250 employees. In China, the definition of SMEs from government
report is under 500 employees (Huang and Bao 2008). The answer of this question
shown that all of the companies which I selected are have fewer employees than 500
and it is conforming to the aim of this research purpose. The result shows below:
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The amount of employees in your company?
Frequency Percent Valid Percent
Cumulative
Percent
Valid under 50 17 17.0 17.9 17.9
51-100 48 48.0 50.5 68.4
101-200 18 18.0 18.9 87.4
201-500 12 12.0 12.6 100.0
Total 95 95.0 100.0
Missing System 5 5.0
Total 100 100.0
Table 4.1: The amount of employees in your company
Table 4.1 shows that there are around half of companies in the size of category
51—100. In this size, company could have enough staff to process the routine work
and complete department settings. Moreover no more than one hundred staff makes
the training easier achieved and controlled, also the company could also settle an
information department to respond the information technique like business
intelligence.
Question 3: from this question, I found that most of the companies were in the profile
level of one million RMB for annual year.
Question 4: it reflected about the nature of the respond companies. Different
companies could lead different policies and business strategies such as government
owned companies have more governmental advantages and budgets, private owned
company have more flexible autonomy to make decisions and joint venture
companies have benefit of company culture and global competitive strength. The
result shows most of the companies are in the nature of private owned. Figure
followed:
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What is the nature of your company?
Frequency Percent Valid Percent
Cumulative
Percent
Valid government owned 3 3.0 3.2 3.2
private owned 75 75.0 78.9 82.1
joint venture 15 15.0 15.8 97.9
Others 2 2.0 2.1 100.0
Total 95 95.0 100.0
Missing System 5 5.0
Total 100 100.0
Table 4.2: What is the nature of your company?
In Table 4.2, there are 75% SMEs in the nature of private owned. In this kind of
company managers have full right to make the decision which could help to the
business intelligence implementation. Although there is less budget use in the
implementation, the managers could implement flexible like use business
intelligence part by part.
Question 5: this question aims to know the current condition of investing in the
information technique. Considered the result from the questionnaire, most of the
companies are have less than 1% of the whole budget. Data shows followed:
How much rate of investing in IT occupy the amount of budget
Frequency Percent Valid Percent
Cumulative
Percent
Valid none 28 28.0 29.5 29.5
under 1% 63 63.0 66.3 95.8
1%--5% 4 4.0 4.2 100.0
Total 95 95.0 100.0
Missing System 5 5.0
Total 100 100.0
Table 4.3: How much rate of investing in IT occupy the amount of budget
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The cost of business intelligence is a big problem in the implementation. Obviously
Table 4.3 shows that less than 1% is not enough, but most of the companies are
private owned. If the companies’ decision makers know what business intelligence is
and recognized the benefit, they can raise the percentage of budget autonomy.
Question 6 most of the companies were all chose the similar answer that the ERP and
CRM. The answer shows the condition of business intelligence use in the SMEs,
which of them are the basic system and useful to the implementation.
Question 7: almost every company was chose all of options. It shows that all decision
makers want to use some new technique to develop their companies.
Question 8: most of the respondents gave the answer ‘none’ for this question. That
means the wholly business intelligence is not implemented.
Question 9: it wants to know the occupation of the respondents. The higher level of
the respondent, the more rights to make decision of business intelligence so that the
concept of business intelligence that the higher level managers know could help the
implementation. The result shows below:
What is your position of the company
Frequency Percent Valid Percent
Cumulative
Percent
Valid board of directors 84 84.0 88.4 88.4
CEO 11 11.0 11.6 100.0
Total 95 95.0 100.0
Missing System 5 5.0
Total 100 100.0
Table 4.4: What is your position of the company
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As Table 4.4 shown, most of the respondents are the board of directors or CEO. They
have the rights to decide to use the business intelligence or not and how to arrange
the budget. To know the concept and opinion of the business intelligence they have is
reasonable and useful.
Which description is nearest to your company to collect and analysis information:
Frequency Percent Valid Percent
Cumulative
Percent
Valid only use for higher level
managers and information
department
5 5.0 5.3 5.3
only collect, store and
analysis in the relative
department
89 89.0 93.7 98.9
all the staff could use, share
and integrate 1 1.0 1.1 100.0
Total 95 95.0 100.0
Missing System 5 5.0
Total 100 100.0
Table 4.5: Which description is nearest to your company to collect and analysis
information?
As Table 4.5 shown, there are 89 companies use the basic system of business
intelligence and 5 companies use only in the high level managers and information
department. However, only 1 company wholly uses business intelligence. The result
shows that there is rare company use business intelligence so that it is prove this
research valid.
Section 2: The attitude of the business intelligence implementation
All the questions in this part are the range of value question (1: strongly disagree; 2:
disagree; 3: normal; 4: agree; 5: strongly agree) aim to find the opinion of the
business intelligence.
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Question 1: there are three sub-questions that aim to know the managers attitude.
1.1 The result of the necessity of the business intelligence shows below:
Figure 4.2: BI implementation is necessary to the company
1.2 The result of the potential profile will be made by implement business
intelligence:
Figure 4.3: BI could lead the potential profile for the company
1.3 The result of the business intelligence promote the competitive
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Figure 4.4: BI could promote the competitive of the company
From this part of the questions, Figure 4.2 to Figure 4.4 shows that there is an
obviously phenomenon. Most of the managers believed that the business intelligence
could lead the benefit of the companies in the aspects of necessary, potential profile
and promote the competitive. The phenomenon shows that most of the decision
makers know the business intelligence helpful to the companies. This is a good thing
of implement business intelligence that they can give the help and supporting to the
implementation.
Questions 2: this part of questions was designed to know the current effect the
implementation of business intelligence. The results of questions 2.1 to 2.3 shows
below:
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the manager participate the meetings of BI
Frequency Percent Valid Percent
Cumulative
Percent
Valid 2 1 1.0 1.1 1.1
3 48 48.0 50.5 51.6
4 36 36.0 37.9 89.5
5 10 10.0 10.5 100.0
Total 95 95.0 100.0
Missing System 5 5.0
Total 100 100.0
Table 4.6: the manager participate the meetings of BI
the manager supervise the development of BI
Frequency Percent Valid Percent
Cumulative
Percent
Valid 2 2 2.0 2.1 2.1
3 31 31.0 32.6 34.7
4 58 58.0 61.1 95.8
5 4 4.0 4.2 100.0
Total 95 95.0 100.0
Missing System 5 5.0
Total 100 100.0
Table 4.7: the manager supervise the development of BI
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the manager gives the suggestions of BI
Frequency Percent Valid Percent
Cumulative
Percent
Valid 2 24 24.0 25.3 25.3
3 67 67.0 70.5 95.8
4 3 3.0 3.2 98.9
5 1 1.0 1.1 100.0
Total 95 95.0 100.0
Missing System 5 5.0
Total 100 100.0
Table 4.8: the manager gives the suggestions of BI
From these results shows in Table 4.6 to Table 4.8 that about half the managers have
no idea of participation the business intelligence meetings. Table 4.7 shows that there
are about 60% managers could supervise the implementation of business intelligence.
Table 4.8 shows about 90% of the managers have no idea of the suggestions or do
not give suggestions about business intelligence implementation. According to the
results of research, I think that most of the managers have the wishes to use the tool
of business intelligence, but because the lack of the knowledge of business
intelligence and busy with the routine work so that they do not have time manage the
implementation. Therefore, to train the staff to know what are the business
intelligence and the capability of use and implement could be the solution of this
condition.
Question 3 there were three questions to discuss the supporting of the business
intelligence. The results show below:
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there are enough funds to support BI implementation
Frequency Percent Valid Percent
Cumulative
Percent
Valid 1 7 7.0 7.4 7.4
2 69 69.0 72.6 80.0
3 19 19.0 20.0 100.0
Total 95 95.0 100.0
Missing System 5 5.0
Total 100 100.0
Table 4.9: there are enough funds to support BI implementation
there are enough members to support BI
Frequency Percent Valid Percent
Cumulative
Percent
Valid 1 17 17.0 17.9 17.9
2 59 59.0 62.1 80.0
3 13 13.0 13.7 93.7
4 4 4.0 4.2 97.9
5 2 2.0 2.1 100.0
Total 95 95.0 100.0
Missing System 5 5.0
Total 100 100.0
Table 4.10: there are enough members to support BI
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there are enough time to complete BI implementation
Frequency Percent Valid Percent
Cumulative
Percent
Valid 1 47 47.0 49.5 49.5
2 43 43.0 45.3 94.7
3 4 4.0 4.2 98.9
4 1 1.0 1.1 100.0
Total 95 95.0 100.0
Missing System 5 5.0
Total 100 100.0
Table 4.11:there are enough time to complete BI implementation
For these questions, the results show that most of the managers do not arrange
enough budget, staff and time to implement business intelligence. Table 4.9 shows
72.6% respondents do not supply enough budgets on the implementation; Table 4.10
shows that 80% respondents have none or fewer professional staff to implement the
business intelligence. Table 4.11 shows the result that over 90% companies do not
have enough time to implement business intelligence. Considered the results above, I
do believe that most of target group companies are not already prepared. As
mentioned in the literature review, three key elements of implement business
intelligence are the cost, professional staff and launch time. The lack in the current
condition is these three core elements, so that the first thing should the companies is
to solve this condition.
Question 4: there were two questions to discuss the data and information source
versatility.
Only collect from information department=12
Collect from all departments=8 No idea of the data collection=75
The results show that most of the companies have no idea of the specific sources of
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data, which means they do not have the basic of implementation of business
intelligence. Therefore, the first thing they should do is to settle information
department and make all the departments to recognize the importance of the business
intelligence and cooperate to collect useful data and information.
Question 5: there were two questions to find the current training condition of
business intelligence.
Figure 4.5: basic training of BI use to know what is BI and how to use
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Figure 4.6: there is a professional team to train the staff
The results from Figure 4.5 and 4.6 show that most the companies have the basic
staff training of business intelligence but do not have the professional team to carry
out the train. According to this condition, I believe that the basic training of business
intelligence is the skills of use some simple software such as EPR, CRM and SCM. It
could helpful for the further implementation of business intelligence. Furthermore,
the companies are not necessary to have their own professional staff; they can hire
some professional training team to train their staff. In this way, the companies could
decrease the cost and make more possibility to implement business intelligence. One
of the key elements can be solved.
Question 6: there were three questions to discuss about the preparation to
implementation of business intelligence.
there are clear definition, target and scope before the BI implementation
Frequency Percent Valid Percent
Cumulative
Percent
Valid 3 24 24.0 25.3 25.3
4 58 58.0 61.1 86.3
5 13 13.0 13.7 100.0
Total 95 95.0 100.0
Missing System 5 5.0
Total 100 100.0
Table 4.13: there are clear definition, target and scope before the BI implementation
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there are detailed plan and achievement of BI
Frequency Percent Valid Percent
Cumulative
Percent
Valid 2 10 10.0 10.5 10.5
3 24 24.0 25.3 35.8
4 51 51.0 53.7 89.5
5 10 10.0 10.5 100.0
Total 95 95.0 100.0
Missing System 5 5.0
Total 100 100.0
Table 4.14: there are clear definition, target and scope before the BI implementation
there is a clear budget layout of BI implementation
Frequency Percent Valid Percent
Cumulative
Percent
Valid 2 6 6.0 6.3 6.3
3 39 39.0 41.1 47.4
4 39 39.0 41.1 88.4
5 11 11.0 11.6 100.0
Total 95 95.0 100.0
Missing System 5 5.0
Total 100 100.0
Table 4.15: there is a clear budget layout of BI implementation
After checking the results from Table 4.13 to 4.15, it is obviously that most of the
companies have the clear recognition, target, and scope of business intelligence that
show from the rate 74.8% and 64.2%, but they have no idea or have clear budge to
invest the implementation of business intelligence. Working with these results, I
think the companies from the research are going to implement business intelligence,
but most of them are not already prepared budget aspect.
Question 7: in this part, there were two questions to check the quality of the data
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which use in the business intelligence.
Figure 4.7: there are stable and reliable data resources of BI implementation
Figure 4.8: there is a BI stander of data quality which settled by business segment
and information department
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From results of Figure 4.7 and 4.8, 95% companies have stable and reliable data of
business intelligence but over 60% companies have a set stander of data. The
condition means they have the basic data to achieve the business intelligence but
there is still the problem to complete that is to set a uniform stander for business
intelligence successful implementation.
Question 8: there were two questions to discuss about the tools and technique the
companies chose and the method of implement the business intelligence. The results
show below:
Figure 4.9: there are the BI tools and technique chosen by business demand
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Figure 4.10: there is or there will be a suitable develop method in BI
The results from Figure 4.9 and 4.10 show that most of the tools and technique are
chosen by the considered the demand of business intelligence.
Section 3 the current use condition of business intelligence implementation
According to the aim of this part, there were only 53companies answered the
questions that because other companies were not implement the business
intelligence.
Question 1: there were four questions to discuss how the quality of the reports and
results output from business intelligence.
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Figure 4.11: BI can provide required information
Figure 4.12: BI can provide precise information
Figure 4.13: BI can provide correct information
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Figure 4.14: BI can provide required information in time
Considered the results from Figure 4.11 to 4.14, most of the respond companies
believe that business intelligence could supply required, precise and current
information. But in the question about time of business intelligence, there are some
companies do not think the business intelligence give the results in time. The results
show that business intelligence could significant help for companies but with the
limitation of the software development, the time of the results works out a little bit
little. That should develop by the software house.
Question 2: there were four questions to discuss about the characteristic.
Figure 4.15: BI can integrate and uniform data from various of data source
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effectively
Figure 4.16: BI can adapt new demand and situation fixable
Figure 4.17: BI is easily to be used and visited
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Figure 4.18: BI can upgrade easily, deal with increasing users without any negative
influence on the system
Figure 4.15 to 4.17 show that the characteristics of integrate and uniform, adapt and
flexibly, easy use and visit are in the good condition and in the good use. But
considered Figure 4.18, it shows that there are some problems about system
upgrading, which made some disadvantages of business intelligence implementation.
Therefore, I think business intelligence could lead many benefit to the companies.
Furthermore the software house should working out on the development of upgrade
software.
Question 3 there were three questions aim to discuss the benefit of business
intelligence implementation.
Figure 4.19: BI can help users learn more knowledge
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Figure 4.20: BI can improve users decision making capability
Figure 4.21: BI can help customer think, raise and analyze in different ways
Figure 4.19 to 4.21 show that most of the companies believe that business
intelligence could lead the many advantages such as help users learn more
knowledge, improve users’ decision making capability and also help customer think,
raise and analyze in different ways.
Question 4: there were five questions aim to discuss the business intelligence could
help in the improvement of efficiency and achievement of performance.
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Figure 4.22: BI can improve the quality of organizational decision-making
Figure 4.23: BI can improve the capability of organization to manage increasingly
complex management activities
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Figure 4.24: BI can help increase organizational output
Figure 4.25: BI can improve organizational business process
Figure 4.26: BI can help decrease operational cost
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As shown in Figure 4.22 to 4.26, most of the companies believed that business
intelligence could bring all the benefits which mentioned above except the decrease
cost. I think the cost of the company might be increase coursed the implementation.
At present, most the tools of business intelligence are expensive so that the software
needs to develop the technique to decrease the cost of the software.
4.4 Data analysis and findings of interview:
From the owner of X shipping agent company:
First part of the interview questions aimed to know the general information and
background of the case company.
1. Company description such like what are the products or services the company
supply and how the company operates?
‘X company was registered on 18th June, 2003. The company is specialized in
agency service for ocean bulk carrier, oil tank, container ship and other vessels,
which is one of the common agency recognized by the state government. Up to
today
The business scope of this office for vessels calling at X port is:
Attending the port formalities for vessel’s entry & departure; arranging for pilot
age, ship berthing, loading/discharging; cargo space booking; documents making;
issuing B/L; signing of shipment contract, dispatch/demurrage agreement; freight
collecting and payment; attending cargo transshipment, multi-modal transportation,
warehousing; arranging for ship’s salvage, marine accident, sea protest and claim;
arranging ship’s bunker & provisions supply, crew’s hospitalization, replacement
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and repatriation etc.’
2. What is your occupation in the company?
‘I am the shareholder and operator of the X shipping agent company. I have the
full right to make any decision which could help the company development.’
3. What are the current problems the company has?
‘There are many problems in the company routine work should to be developed.
The first problem is every decision of the company is made by the experience
and there is not a scientific method to make decision; secondly, every business is
separately and there is not any communication and resource sharing among staff.
Thirdly, finance department is not informationization enough. Most of the tasks
such as receipts and invoices process are still under the manual work. Moreover,
there is not a good system to manage customers.’
From this part of questions, the results show that
1 the case company is one of SMEs;
2 the interviewee is the decision maker in the company, he has the right to
implementation the business intelligence;
3 the interviewee raise four problems existing in the case company which of them
can be solved by implement business intelligence.
Second part question was designed to know about current condition of business
intelligence.
1. How do you recognize the business intelligence?
‘Business intelligence is a kind of scientific tools to help manage company and
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improve the operation efficiency. The business intelligence is not widely used
currently. I find the content of the business intelligence is including data
warehouse, data mining and OLAP.’
2. Is there any business intelligence tool use in your company?
‘I am not sure which system belongs to business intelligence. Currently, I think
our basic finance system, shipping arranges system, port condition system and
weather report system are the business intelligence tools.’
3. How much budgets does the company arrange on the information technique?
‘Our company has the limited budget for the information technique which
includes hardware upgrade, essential software and maintenance cost. But if there
is any tools could improve the company efficiency and bring much more profile,
we still can invest more percentage of budgets on the information technique.’
From this part of interview questions, I found that the owner of the company have
limited knowledge of business intelligence, that might be affect implementation of
business intelligence. Furthermore the owner do not have the exactly distinguish
about business intelligence tools. In addition, there is not enough budget of
information technique. That could be an important element of barrier implementation
of business intelligence.
Third part question aimed to talk about the barriers of business intelligence use in the
company.
1. What is the use condition of business intelligence in this industry
‘In the shipping agent industry, most of the companies are in the almost the same
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condition. Most of the companies in this industry are working in the small size
like our company. The systems which I mentioned above are widely used
through there are different versions.’
2. What is current problems of business intelligence implementation or why the
company does not implement business intelligence
‘In my opinion, I think there are four reasons to launch a new technique or tools.
Firstly, the cost of it, due to our company size, we cannot afford too much
money to use a new tools; secondly, there should be a long period to adapt a new
technique or tool used in the company. This condition can affect our routine
work; moreover, there is no respond of the new technique and we cannot make
us in the risk. Finally, if a new technique in used, we have to pay some money on
the staff training and hardware of upgrade.’
3. Are there any technique barriers for business intelligence?
‘The same as I mention above, staff training and hardware upgrade. In addition,
the software must not design for our company so that we have to pay more
attention on the debug of the tool.’
4. how long the company can afford the business intelligence implementation
‘I cannot give a precise answer for this question. I just have to say if we decide
to use a new tool the best thing is as soon as possible. In addition, business off
season could be a better period.’
According to the results of third part, I could find that there is rare business
intelligence tools use in the shipping agent industry. Moreover, I think business
intelligence could help and develop the company after go through the answer of the
interviewee. Another finding is the same as I mentioned in the literature review.
76
Three key elements of barriers of implementation are the cost, professional staff and
time.
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Chapter 5 Discussion
This chapter will state the major findings based on the research question. Considered
with the data collected from the questionnaires and interviews, to present the
meaning of the finding and the reasons of the condition happened.
1. Current condition of business intelligence usage in
small/medium-sized enterprises
After the research of the questionnaire and interview, the findings of the current
condition are that: (1) most of the owners and decision makers have limited
knowledge of business intelligence, they have the general information of
business intelligence but are not clear about the main idea of it, even though
their companies has already implemented some basic systems of business
intelligence. (2) The current use tools and systems positively affect the
Small/medium-sized enterprises. There are some finance systems, order systems,
customer management systems, etc, which are improving the efficiency of the
company and at the same time these systems are accumulating the data which
supply the necessary historical data and information regarding business
intelligence implementation. (3) Most of the companies arrange lower budgets
for IT. The finding shows that the decision makers made less than a 1% budget
to develop the company information condition. (4) The staff working in the
Chinese Small/medium-sized enterprises do not have enough knowledge and
acceptance to wholly implement business intelligence. (5) Most of the
companies would like to implement new techniques and management methods
which could help and develop the company.
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2. What are the main barriers to business intelligence operation in
small/medium-sized enterprises
According to the questionnaire and interview, I found that (1) the current
business intelligence tools and software are expensive that are implemented in
the Small/medium-sized enterprises. Although there are many tools and software
existing, they are produced and developed by professional software houses and
cost many times of software designer to develop, so that their price can be
afforded by the Small/medium-sized enterprises. (2) Most of the software is
complex and hard to learn how to use, and also there are fewer training teams
existing to help the Small/medium-sized enterprises to achieve whole
implementation. Staff working in the Small/medium-sized enterprises do not
have enough preparation to suit the business intelligence. (3) According to the
size of the Small/medium-sized enterprises, they cannot afford such a long time
to implement it. Business intelligence is not only one or two tools but also a
broad scale system and a kind of business management idea. Therefore, it needs
a long period to debug it and use it in the routine work.
Currently, most of the Chinese Small/medium-sized enterprises are not wholly
implementing business intelligence. Section 1 and 2 from the questionnaire give
the results of it. The Small/medium-sized enterprises are using basic business
intelligence, such as ERP and CRM, in the routine work so that the companies
have data and information arrangements and the possibility of implementation.
Moreover, with the accumulation of the data and information, they have to bring
the business intelligence in to make the company further develop. However,
considering the needs internally, it is important to achieve the intelligence
management and maximum use of information systems, but there are still much
data and information that are not in use, such as orders, transactions and
customer information, which should be used effectually to help the company. In
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the case company, the condition of implementation is almost the same that some
business intelligence sub-systems use. Although the tools are only used in
general, they still supply the help for the company. Finally, most of the
companies are still at the stage of wait and see, so ensuring successful
implementation is essential.
After the research findings of the questionnaire and interview, we can clearly
find three elements that are the current barriers to business intelligence
implementation.
Cost: according to the size of the company, they cannot arrange much budget for
IT, so that there would be a contradiction due to the lower budgets and the high
price of the business intelligence implementation which still belongs to a high
level cost of development. Therefore, the software house could find a lower cost
way to decrease the cost of developing. Small/medium-sized enterprises do not
need all the parts of the business intelligence. To develop some simple and
suitable tools is a better way to help the Small/medium-sized enterprises
implementation of the business intelligence. Small/medium-sized enterprises
only get what they need and help the companies managing immediately. In
addition, to avoid the higher cost, Small/medium-sized enterprises could achieve
the business intelligence step by step. The managers could find the most need
business intelligence department to implement the business intelligence. After
the funds accumulating, the Small/medium-sized enterprises could implement
other parts of business intelligence and finally achieve the wholly business
intelligence implementation in the company. Moreover, there is another way to
implement business intelligence that is to find a software house to have the
customer made tools. The Small/medium-sized enterprises give the details of the
company and the requests of what they want, and the software house develops
and designs the software in the terms of the condition of the company and the
requests they raised. In this way, the Small/medium-sized enterprises could get
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the unique and suitable tools to implement business intelligence which method
could avoid the useless and high cost part of business intelligence.
Training in business intelligence skills: for the good implementation of business
intelligence, the companies need the staff to have skills in it. Considered for that
reason, training must also be in process at the same time as business intelligence
implementation. Training cost, time and the acceptability of the staff are all
uncertain factors. Any one of these factors implement failure could affect the
business intelligence implementation. However, the reasons of high cost and
long time of training staff to achieve business intelligence are caused of complex
use and no professional trainers. For this problem, software house should take
notice of that. The easy ways to avoid that situation are design a friendly
interface and develop new business intelligence tools based on the current use
software which could have the similar operate method. In addition, the software
house should have a professional team to train the company staff. There are two
advantages; the training team from the software house is familiar with the tools
they developed. They could give the best training to the staff. Furthermore, the
Small/medium-sized enterprises are also could decrease the cost of the training
staff.
Implementation time: new IT implementation should have a period of adaptation
and adjustment. Therefore, the companies should have the capability to afford
this period. But, unfortunately, Small/medium-sized enterprises need the new
technique to achieve success in a short time; thus, it restricts the implementation
of business intelligence. The Small/medium-sized enterprises implement the
business intelligence step by step could decrease the time of implementation.
Every subsystem of business intelligence use in the company could quickly
accept and suit in the use. The company could implement subsystem one by one
and decrease the passive effect of the suit problems. Therefore, in this method,
the Small/medium-sized enterprises could implementation business intelligence
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in a short time.
Furthermore, the reliability of the data and information is also a problem. It is an
important element affecting the business intelligence implementation. There are
many examples the same as case company that the decision maker is not sure
about the reliability of the data or has already made the wrong decision caused
by the wrong data and information. There are two aspects of data and
information reliability: data quality, it strongly affects the result of the business
intelligence and the implementation; data could respond the fact and reasonable
which makes the business intelligence significant to the company.
Moreover, there are fewer successful examples of launching business
intelligence. Small/medium-sized enterprises are afraid of risk and there is not
enough knowledge and experience of the implementation of business
intelligence.
Business intelligence could collect data and information and extract useful data
and processes. The characteristic of business intelligence could strongly support
the decision making system. In the routine work, data and information could be
extracted from ERP, CRM, SCM (supply chain management), E-commerce and
Environmental Scanning. After the tools of business intelligence, which include
data mining, OLAP, etc, the decision makers could find the experience from the
historical data and the prophecy of the further business. An important aim of
business intelligence is to support the decision making system. Business
intelligence uses IT to supply the decision making for the strategy: improve the
capability of insight, support information acquirement and analysis. It could also
help the companies to improve the quality of the decision making, relationship
between the customers and the company, decrease the business cost of the
company and upgrade the business method.
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With the development Business intelligence, the software house should also
supply the whole application solution that is idea of whole system designing. It
is conclude the requests of the future decision making and analyzing. With the
help of information technique, the company could classify the object that they
need. It could help the business staff to solve the problems which happened in
the routine work and then simplify the process of business information.
Technically, that means to settle a module and not only support the use
information from data base but also support all kinds of usage of business
information.
These findings and general analysis were work from data and information which
collected from widely questionnaire and interview, thus all the findings and
analysis could be suit for all kinds of Chinese Small/medium-sized enterprises.
83
Chapter 6 Conclusion
The purpose of this research is firstly to go through the concept and knowledge to
find the current development and condition of business intelligence implementation
in Small/medium-sized enterprises; secondly, after finding the condition of business
intelligence, to find the elements of barriers to business intelligence implementation.
In the literature review, I present the general definition of business intelligence and
also the implementation tools of business intelligence. It aims to give a clear concept
and provide the basic background of this research. After the literature review, I found
that business intelligence is not only a new information technique but also a new
method management, which includes data warehouse, data mining, OLAP and data
market. It uses the data collected in the business and gives the analysis support and
future prediction of the decision making. Moreover, I have shown the business
intelligence condition of Small/medium-sized enterprises used in China, which are
the research areas. Considered with the review of the condition of business
intelligence in China, there are some barriers, such as cost, skills of the staff and the
launch time of business intelligence, thus leading to a weak use of business
intelligence in China.
With the aim of this research, there are some definitions of qualitative and
quantitative, and the questionnaire and interview are designed to search for the
results to the research question with are considered the purpose of the research. There
are one hundred questionnaires responded to by the owners of Small/medium-sized
enterprises and an interview with the shareholder of the case company.
After using the questionnaire and interview research approaches, there are many
useful findings and results. Firstly, it reflects the fact as mentioned in the literature
review; secondly, the main barriers are the cost, skills of staff and time and, after the
84
discussion, I give the recommendation to solve the barriers and make better
implementation to acknowledge and understand business intelligence, to develop IT
to decrease the cost and make it easy to use, to implement an example and let the
Small/medium-sized enterprises have the confidence to use business intelligence.
6.1 Recommendations:
1. Learning more knowledge of business intelligence. The managers of
Small/medium-sized enterprises and the staff from the company need to know
more about business intelligence that could not only help the business
intelligence implementation but also to make better results of implementation.
2. Continue using the current basic business intelligence tools and progressively
achieve whole business intelligence implementation. The information
department of the government should make an example of business intelligence
that could make the Small/medium-sized enterprises find the benefit from it and
get some experience.
3. To develop the technique of business intelligence to positively affect the
implementation. Software houses should develop the tools and make
implementation in a low cost, easy to use way and decrease the implementation
time. Also another method is the Small/medium-sized enterprises bringing the
business intelligence step by step which means that the company uses the
business intelligence subsystems one by one. It could make the company
gradually accept from the cost, time, etc.
85
4. To find software house to have the customer made tools. In this way
Small/medium-sized enterprises could decrease the cost of the implementation
of business intelligence and also could have the suitable business intelligence
tools and software.
5. To implement more examples of business intelligence in Small/medium-sized
enterprises could give the confidence and experience for business intelligence.
The government and organizations should pay attention to business intelligence.
Giving the support and help could make the Small/medium-sized enterprises
stronger and get a better profile.
6. To know and recognize the target of business intelligence implementation aims
to recognize a clearly target and knowledge could make the Small/medium-sized
enterprises’ successfully implemented.
6.2 The limitation of this research
In this research, according to the research approach chosen and practical situation,
there are the limitations presented as follows:
1. Research approach limitation: I chose one hundred Small/medium-sized
enterprises as the research sample and there are 98 companies who responded.
The number of the samples is limited; thus the sampling errors cannot be
avoided.
2. The quality of the responses: although all the questionnaires and interviews are
86
subjective, there are inevitably some prejudices shown from the both
questionnaire and interview.
3. The time is limited: the dissertation is designed and complete in three months;
thus the research is not deep enough. In addition, according to the time limit,
there is not enough research for the case study
4. The knowledge is limited: since my knowledge and understanding is limited, the
research has some problems such as the deep level of business intelligence idea.
6.3 Further research
With the development of business intelligence and IT, the tools and management
ideas of business intelligence will be widely used in the Small/medium-sized
enterprises. For further research, to develop the function and quality of the business
intelligence software is the first important aspect. Designing some new software or
other tools to suit the Small/medium-sized enterprises needs to be researched, and
researchers need to do more and deep research in the aspects of the environment of
Small/medium-sized enterprises implementation of business intelligence and the use
condition of business intelligence. In addition, the time and preparation of the
research should be longer and better that could help the research and the precision of
the results.
Word count: 16635
87
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Appendix A: Questionnaire
Questionnaire of Business intelligence implementation
in small medium
Introduction:
1. First of all, thanks for your attention and participate the questionnaire of business
intelligence implementation in small/medium-size enterprise.
2. The questionnaire include three parts which are the general condition of
organization and business intelligence; the attitude of the business intelligence
implementation and the current BI system use condition.
3. This questionnaire uses for the academic research, all the data and information is
protected and impossible to publish.
4. No name or other details is needed
Thanks for your attention.
Liu Chang University of Sheffield
95
Part 1 The general condition of organization and business intelligence
1 which industry of your company works in? ____
A Comprehensive group B Communications C energy D financial services
E shipping agent F medical care G manufacturing H retail trade I others
2 the amount of employees in your company? ____
A under 50 B 51—100 C 101—200 D 201—500 E over 501
3 how much about profile of your company every year? ____
4 what is the nature of your company?
A government owned B private owned C joint venture D others
5 how much rate of investing in IT occupy the amount of profile
A none B under 1% C 1%--5% D over 5%
6 what are the exiting information system in your company? ____ (multiple choice)
A ERP B CRM C SCM D MIS E others
7 which one is your company want to use of business intelligence? ____ (multiple
choice)
A customer service B HR C Financial reporting and analysis D products and
service analysis E operational efficiency analysis F supply chain management
G others____
8 which one is the tool that using in company: ____
A data warehouse B OLAP C data mining D others____
9 which one is the supervisor of the CIO: ____ occupation
A board of directors B CEO C vice-CEO D department manager E others___
10 which description is nearest to your company to collect and analysis information:
____
A only use for higher level managers and information department
B only collect, store and analysis in the relative department
C all the staff could use, share and integrate
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Part 2 the attitude of the business intelligence implementation
1. considered the attitude of manager of BI to answer the
questions 1 2 3 4 5
1.1 BI implementation is necessary to our company
1.2 BI could lead the potential profile for our company
1.3 BI could promote the competitive of the company
2. considered the effect of manager in the BI
implementation to answer the questions 1 2 3 4 5
2.1 the manager participate the meetings of BI
implementation
2.2the manager supervise the development of BI
implementation
2.3the manager gives the suggestions of BI implementation
3. considered the support of BI implementation to answer
the questions 1 2 3 4 5
3.1 there are enough funds to support BI implementation
3.2there are enough members to support BI implementation
3.3there are enough time to complete BI implementation
4. considered the degree of supporting from staff to answer
the questions 1 2 3 4 5
4.1 high supporting from information department
4.2 high supporting from non-information department
5. considered the skills training of staff of BI to answer the
question 1 2 3 4 5
5.1 basic training of BI use to know what is BI and how to
use
5.2 there is a professional team to train the staff
6. considered the BI plan and implementation situation to
answer the questions 1 2 3 4 5
6.1 there are clear definition, target and scope before the BI
implementation
6.2 there are detailed plan and achievement of BI
implementation
6.3 there is a clear budget layout of BI implementation
7. considered the data quality in the BI implementation to
answer the questions 1 2 3 4 5
7.1 there are stable and reliable data resources of BI
implementation
7.2 there is a BI stander of data quality which settled by
business segment and information department
8. considered the BI develop tools and technique chosen to
answer the questions 1 2 3 4 5
8.1 there are the BI tools and technique chosen by business
demand
8.2 there is or there will be a suitable develop method in BI
implementation
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Part 3 the current BI system use condition
1. In terms of the report and information quality of BI,
answer following questions 1 2 3 4 5
1.1 BI can provide required information
1.2 BI can provide precise information
1.3 BI can provide correct information
1.4 BI can provide required information in time
2. In terms of BI characteristic, answer following
questions: 1 2 3 4 5
2.1 BI can integrate and uniform data from various of data
source effectively.
2.2 BI can adapt new demand and situation flexibly.
2.3 BI is easily to be used and visited
2.4 BI can upgrade easily, deal with increasing users
without any negative influence on the system.
3. In terms of influence on capability and efficiency of BI
to system users answer following questions. 1 2 3 4 5
3.1 BI can help users learn more knowledge.
3.2 BI can improve users decision making capability
3.3 BI can help customer think, raise and analyze in
different ways.
4. considered with the capability of improvement of
efficiency and achievement of performance business
intelligence to answer questions
1 2 3 4 5
4.1 BI can improve the quality of organizational
decision-making
4.2 BI can improve the capability of organization to
manage increasingly complex management activities
4.3 BI can help increase organizational output
4.4 BI can improve organizational business process
4.5 BI can help decrease operational cost
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Appendix B interview question
Interview data: 12/08/2009
Interviewee: a shareholder of the case company
Part 1 the general information and background of the case company.
4. Company description such like what are the products or services the company
supply and how the company operates?
‘X company was registered on 18th June, 2003. The company is specialized in
agency service for ocean bulk carrier, oil tank, container ship and other vessels,
which is one of the common agency recognized by the state government. Up to
today
The business scope of this office for vessels calling at X port is:
Attending the port formalities for vessel’s entry & departure; arranging for pilot
age, ship berthing, loading/discharging; cargo space booking; documents making;
issuing B/L; signing of shipment contract, dispatch/demurrage agreement; freight
collecting and payment; attending cargo transshipment, multi-modal transportation,
warehousing; arranging for ship’s salvage, marine accident, sea protest and claim;
arranging ship’s bunker & provisions supply, crew’s hospitalization, replacement
and repatriation etc.’
5. What is your occupation in the company?
‘I am the shareholder and operator of the X shipping agent company. I have the
full right to make any decision which could help the company development.’
99
6. What are the current problems the company has?
‘There are many problems in the company routine work should to be developed.
The first problem is every decision of the company is made by the experience
and there is not a scientific method to make decision; secondly, every business is
separately and there is not any communication and resource sharing among staff.
Thirdly, finance department is not informationization enough. Most of the tasks
such as receipts and invoices process are still under the manual work. Moreover,
there is not a good system to manage customers.’
Part 2 the current condition of business intelligence.
4. How do you recognize the business intelligence?
‘Business intelligence is a kind of scientific tools to help manage company and
improve the operation efficiency. The business intelligence is not widely used
currently. I find the content of the business intelligence is including data
warehouse, data mining and OLAP.’
5. Is there any business intelligence tool use in your company?
‘I am not sure which system belongs to business intelligence. Currently, I think
our basic finance system, shipping arranges system, port condition system and
weather report system are the business intelligence tools.’
6. How much budgets does the company arrange on the information technique?
‘Our company has the limited budget for the information technique which
includes hardware upgrade, essential software and maintenance cost. But if there
100
is any tools could improve the company efficiency and bring much more profile,
we still can invest more percentage of budgets on the information technique.’
Part 3 the barriers of business intelligence use in the company.
5. What is the use condition of business intelligence in this industry
‘In the shipping agent industry, most of the companies are in the almost the same
condition. Most of the companies in this industry are working in the small size
like our company. The systems which I mentioned above are widely used
through there are different versions.’
6. What is current problems of business intelligence implementation or why the
company does not implement business intelligence
‘In my opinion, I think there are four reasons to launch a new technique or tools.
Firstly, the cost of it, due to our company size, we cannot afford too much
money to use a new tools; secondly, there should be a long period to adapt a new
technique or tool used in the company. This condition can affect our routine
work; moreover, there is no respond of the new technique and we cannot make
us in the risk. Finally, if a new technique in used, we have to pay some money on
the staff training and hardware of upgrade.’
7. Are there any technique barriers for business intelligence?
‘The same as I mention above, staff training and hardware upgrade. In addition,
the software must not design for our company so that we have to pay more
attention on the debug of the tool.’
8. how long the company can afford the business intelligence implementation
101
‘I cannot give a precise answer for this question. I just have to say if we decide
to use a new tool the best thing is as soon as possible. In addition, business off
season could be a better period.’