A Descriptive Literature Review and Classification of Business Intelligence and Big Data Research

Abstract

Business Intelligence (BI) leverages IT tools and services to transform data into insights that inform an organization's business decisions. BI using Big Data has gained popularity in recent years and has become a significant study area for academics and practitioners. However, prior studies have highlighted the technical challenges of BI using Big Data. The extant BI and Big Data literature has mainly focused on technology and behavior-related factors to examine this field. Fewer studies have provided the extent of this area to understand the classification of BI and the Big Data field. Given the significant nature of BI and Big Data, this paper presents a descriptive literature review and classification scheme for BI and Business Intelligence. The study includes 128 refereed journal articles published since the inception of BI and Big Data research. The articles are classified based on a scheme that consists of three main categories: Management, Technological, and Application and Domain of usage. The results show that current research is still skewed towards technological aspects, followed by management, and followed by application and domain of use. This review provides a reference source and classification scheme for information system research interested in BD and Business Intelligence domain and indicates under-focused areas and future directions.