Using Business Intelligence in IT Governance Decision Making

'Business Intelligence' (BI) has been widely used to describe the process of gathering, analyzing and transforming large amounts of data into information useful for decision making. This paper examines BI from a decision-maker's perspective in an IT governance context through a case study of a large Scandinavian financial institution. The key findings indicate that BI is primarily used to inform structured operational decisions and as an instrument for dialogue in unstructured strategic decisions. Our study shows how 'hard facts' provided by BI are used as a foundation for opening a dialogue and as a supporting instrument to make arguments seem more convincing during decision-making discussions. We also found that standard performance reporting is used more for operational decision making, whereas predictive analytics are utilized primarily in strategic decision making. These results can assist managers looking to improve their operational and strategic decision-making processes by indicating the appropriate type of BI for each type of decision.