Investigation of Knowledge Management Support for Business Intelligence in the Saudi Public Sector

Nowadays, data explosion and information overload, employee turnover, and the need for organizations to better utilize their intellectual capital have led to increased interest in Business Intelligence and Knowledge Management domains. The main intention of Business Intelligence is to enhance employees' knowledge with information that allows them to achieve organizational strategies. Moreover, the success of any organization is driven by individual intelligence supported by personality knowledge and experience. However, the majority of knowledge in public sector organizations is in unstructured or in the minds of its employees. Organizations, especially in the Saudi public sector, use poor Knowledge Management practices which lead to loss of experience, knowledge gaps and poor decisions. These organizations need to integrate Knowledge Management with Business Intelligence to reach the majority of benefits. Business Intelligence and Knowledge Management are indispensable tools for modern organizations. There has been some confusion as to the relationship between Knowledge Management and Business Intelligence. Even though both of them differ, together Knowledge Management and Business Intelligence ensure real support in deploying successful business strategies across the organization by smoothly managing multicultural teams of employees in providing highest quality products and global services to multicultural customers. Business Intelligence and Knowledge Management provide better understanding on business context and interpretation results. This study will focus on Knowledge Management practices in the Saudi public sector since the activities are mainly developing and providing knowledge. It examines the reality of Knowledge Management applications in the public sector organizations of Saudi Arabia. It also sheds light on the nature of the integration between Knowledge Management and Business Intelligence in order to increase organizational performance, particularly in the Saudi public sector. Finally, it presents models that have been chosen from recent studies to help Saudi public sector utilize Knowledge Management applications. A model has been chosen to demonstrate how Knowledge Management and Business Intelligence can benefit from each other in order to state that combining is more useful as compared to their individual utilization.