A goal-oriented, business intelligence-supported decision-making methodology

Abstract

In many enterprises and other types of organizations, decision making is both a crucial and a challenging task. Despite their importance, many decisions are still made based on experience and intuition rather than on evidence supported by rigorous approaches. Decisions are often made this way because of lack of data, unknown relationships between data and goals, conflicting goals, and poorly understood risks. This research presents a goal-oriented, business intelligence-supported methodology for decision making. The methodology, which is iterative, allows enterprises to begin with limited data, discover required data to build their models, capture stakeholders goals, and model threats, opportunities, and their impact. It also enables the aggregation of Key Performance Indicators and their integration into goal models. The tool-supported methodology and its models aim to enhance the user’s experience with common business intelligence applications. Managers can monitor the impact of decisions on the organization's goals and improve both decision models and business processes. The approach is illustrated and evaluated through a retail business scenario, from which several lessons were learned. One key lesson is that once an organization has a goal model, data can be added iteratively. The example, tool support, and lessons suggest the feasibility of the methodology.