Analysing Success of a Business Intelligence Data Warehouse in the New Zealand Pubic Sector

Abstract

This is a Case Study of a Business Intelligence (BI) Data Warehouse in a New Zealand public sector organisation, in which a sample of the organisation’s key end-users and developers are interviewed for their perceptions on what makes the BI Data Warehouse successful. Useful insights were uncovered about the dimensions of Information Systems success in a data warehousing context. Dimensions included system and service quality, the quality of the information, the net benefits realised and satisfaction with use. The study tested how these success dimensions were interrelated and how key factors - known as success antecedents - contribute to success. On the whole, system quality was perceived to be good, both the quality of service received and data produced was very good, and participants were moderately satisfied with their experiences of using the BI Data Warehouse. Many of the benefits realised were consistent with the organisation’s stated long-term strategic aims of faster and better information-reporting, greater consistency and reliability of information and better informed decision-making. The Information Systems research that was reviewed supported a number of the study’s findings. These included confirmation that there were positive associations between the quality of the information, the benefits that are realised and user satisfaction. However, against expectations, system quality did not affect how satisfied users were. Benefits realised were not noticeably impacted by either system or information quality alone; instead, both high information quality and .high system quality were needed for users to realise benefits from the BI Data Warehouse. Overall, the single most influential antecedent influencing the overall success of the BI Data Warehouse was the skills and attributes possessed by the development team and the strategy deployed to develop the system (System Development Characteristics). The BI Data Warehouse still needs further enhancement to take full advantage of its currently under-utilised BI potential. With better system capability and data quality, the scale of BI benefits realised are likely to increase markedly.