Business Analysis for Business Intelligence

Discuss the business-analysis-for-business-intelligence

Business intelligence is the set of tools and techniques as well as decision support applications, which play a vital role in the planning, implementation, and control process in the organization. Therefore, Business intelligence allows an organization to gather, access, collect, and analyze corporate data to make decisions for the short, medium, and long term. Business intelligence identifies opportunities and implements an effective strategy based on the awareness and perception of the managers (Brjis, 2016). It works around many different facets of the organization like market research, customer segmentation and support, and profitability of each product and firm.

Business intelligence can be also termed competitive intelligence since it can help in providing significant information about not only one's own business but also how the competitors are acting based on how the system is structured and data is maintained. Furthermore, all information and knowledge are gathered on the actions of competitors and decisions are made based on competitors’ actions. Business intelligence helps the organization to make good decisions. It removes a lot of the guesswork in the organization. Along with this, Business intelligence is a vast category of application programs, methods, and technologies for gathering, storing, collecting, and analyzing information and knowledge to make a decision in the organization or at the workplace (Hall, 2012).  

Business Analysis for Business Intelligence

Advantages of the Business Intelligence

Information processing is the basis of achieving a competitive advantage. It is very important for organizations that available information should be right, accessible at the right time, and to the right employees based on their roles and responsibilities. In Business intelligence, the company gets correct data if the system is effectively maintained, updating information, and forecasting, which allows the organization to see what possible scenarios it could encounter in the future, therefore; it helps to remove the guesswork and take the right actions for the managers (Chong, 2014). Along with this, business intelligence users can get an immediate answer to business problems and questions. It helps to make a quick decision without losing valuable time. One of the biggest advantages of business intelligence is that it provides business states of the period how many pieces of products were sold in which place and by which buyers or consumers (Quaddus and Arch, 2015). Moreover, this data helps to get business objectives and survive in the market. A view of customer behavior and experience provides analysis which helps to make the plan better for the company’s future.  

Business intelligence provides information on what the customers purchased or not, it gives the opportunity to understand and assess the customers’ needs and wants. Furthermore, the company can get profit and hold on to valuable clients as per the required business interest of the company. Business intelligence helps a company to evaluate its capabilities, weaknesses, and strengths against the company’s competitors, which helps to increase sales of the company and identify the cross-selling of products (Chen, et al., 2012). Apart from this, it helps to make a plan, and programs in terms of equities, assets, expenses, and profits because it determines the business goals in terms of operation and financial objectives.

One of the Business intelligence tools is the OLAP tool, which helps to analyze multidimensional data from multiple aspects (Kudyba, 2014). It is a powerful and very useful business technology, which is used in data recovery, including the capacity for boundless report viewing and complicating calculation. However, it can be argued that for small organizations, these technologies may not be that much useful, and further, small businesses may not have the required resources as well to implement these technologies.

Loyalty Card

Retailers issue a loyalty card to their customers, a retail business can take the data and information about their customers by loyalty card. Customers are offered product discounts, points, coupons or other rewards by the retail business in exchange for customers’ participation in the company’s activities. Business intelligence and the use of information systems can facilitate this effectively. The royal card identifies the customers and provides information about what customers purchased (Zikmund, et al., 2013). For example, Woolworths decided to make an offer for their customer ‘a $30 off if their customers spend $90 in one-week’ offer to all customers who haven’t used their loyalty card in the past 30 days, or they also target individual customers with deals on their favorite products. An organization needs to collect the information of customers. After that, the organization requires that this collected information or details should be put in the proper mechanism, and this data converts into knowledge for the business (Blythe, 2013).   

Data mining is a technology; it predicts the behavior of customers, and the future and helps the organization to make a decision.  Furthermore, retailers can make better decisions for the business. Data mining takes out useful information from the large piles of past and present data that may not be easily decipherable. This information is helpful for prediction in the organization. It works for the Fraud detection because it protects the information of all users.  Apart from this, an organization can make easy decisions for the future by data mining applications and technology (Kudyba, 2014). Data mining allows the organization to understand the behavior of a customer. This information helps the organization to know the customers’ needs. Along with this, it affects sales, product positioning, customer satisfaction, and profits. An organization can gain, sustain, and can be more successful in this competitive market if an organization adopts data mining technology for market campaigns.

Factors Contributed to Failed Payroll Implementation System

At Queensland Health, there were various factors that contributed to the payroll implementation system failure. It is identified that the payroll implementation system at Queensland Health is one of the complex payroll systems due to the large workforce and multiple employment awards and agreements, which needs great attention to be implemented effectively. It is also identified that in the project, the main contractor (IBM) used the same SAP HR system that was used for Queensland Housing with some modifications (Stair and Reynolds 2015). However, the requirements of Queensland Health are different from the housing which also generates complexities in the payroll system and leads to failure.

At the same time, it is also identified that poor governance of the implementation system was also a factor that led to the failure of the payroll implementation project. It is because at Queensland Health, the governance structure among the stakeholders was not so effective creating issues related to the unclear roles and responsibilities among the stakeholders such as CorpTech, IBM, and QLD Health (Eden and Sedera 2014). But, at the same time, it is identified that the stakeholders attempted to clarify the roles and responsibilities but, the ownership of data and system created tension among the stakeholders that led to poor governance and affected the implementation of the payroll system.

On the other hand, in the project, there was also confusion among the stakeholders about the identification of customers. In the project, it is identified that the project deliverables were assigned between the shared service entity such as CorpTech, and the prime contractor such as IBM. But, there was no support from Queensland Health, who was the system user. This confusion among the stakeholders made this project one of the largest information system failures in the country (Bavarsad, et al., 2013). Along with this, the less-defined project scope was also one of the factors that contributed to the failed payroll system implementation project at Queensland Health. It is found that due to the additional planning, the scope and complexities of the project were overestimated by a prime contractor (IBM), which created issues for IBM to estimate the business requirements, which ultimately resulted in time and cost overruns (Hardy, 2014).

It is found that during the project, more than 47 changes were requested by the stakeholders such as QLD Health, IBM and CorpTech, which created issues related to the inadequate documentation in order to implement the project effectively. At the same time, the lack of periodic review of the business needs also contributed in the payroll implementation system failure. It is identified that at Queensland Health, the absence of periodic review created difficulties in the system testing and implementation in order to implement the project at the right time (Hart 2016). In this, the disagreement on the project scope from the side of stakeholders also created issues in implementing the project and also increased the cost of the project.  

The poor management and pre-testing process also contributed factor of the payroll implantation system failure at Queensland Health. It was found that at Queensland Health, the pre-implementation and testing process was unable to identify the risk in the system. In this, before the implementation, the critical business activities were not developed adequately due to a lack of effective methodology. It also negatively affected the implementation process of the project and caused a failure of the project within the firm. Along with this, in the project, there was also no monitoring and managing committee that could monitor the budget and cost of the project (Wernham, 2012). It negatively affected the accountability of the stakeholders towards the budget and costs of the project and developed serious considerations that caused the failure of the project among the stakeholders.

At the same time, it is also found that some recommendations were not accepted by the project board which also contributed to the failure of the project. It is found that in order to make effective implementation of the payroll implementation system, SAP recommended a full parallel pay run comparison between the old and new systems (Peffers, Rothenberger, and Kuechler 2012). However, the project board does not accept this recommendation due to the size and complexities of undertaking the tasks, which lead the project's failure.

At the same time, poor risk management was also one of the factors that contributed to the project's failure. It is identified that before the implementation of the project, a full risk profile was undertaken by the stakeholders but, this risk profile was unable to identify the level of risks to what extent. Along with this, the risk profile was also not clear whether the risk could be materialized and how many and what staff categories may not be paid (Eden and Sedera 2014). It negatively affected the project implementation process and also developed the risks related to the instability of the system within the organization.

Along with this, in the implementation strategy, there was no contingency and succession planning for the system, which also led to the project failure among the stakeholders. Due to this, the firms were not able to maintain the same level of risk and urgency in the project. On the other hand, it is also identified that at Queensland Health, the complex workforce profile also made a great contribution to the failure of the payroll implementation system. It is because at Queensland Health, employees were engaged in different roles and profiles, which created issues for the project board to maintain the same payroll system for all the employees (Stair and Reynolds 2015). Due to this, the employees were unable to analyze their growth opportunities in the firm, which led to the failure of the system during its implementation.

Classification of Factors

System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) is one of the effective frameworks that describes the phases of creating software components and aligning these components to make a large system to resolve the firms’ issues. There are six phases of a system development life cycle such as planning, analysis, design, implementation, testing & integration, and maintenance (Rock-Evans 2014). These phases play an important role in developing and maintaining effective information software, which increases the effectiveness of the firm in the market and also provides competitive advantages.

The first phase of SDLC is related to system planning, which plays a critical role in creating and developing a successful system. In this phase, the software developer or organization identifies the issues in the existing system and plans the actions to resolve these issues significantly. This phase is also effective for the software developer or organization planning the human resources as well as the cost of the project (Bronzite 2012). Along with this, this phase is also crucial in proposing alternative solutions after meeting with different stakeholders of the project.

In context to the payroll management system, most of the factors are covered in the first phase of SDLC. It is because the main reason of payroll implementation project failure was related to the ineffective planning at the beginning of the project. It was found that in the payroll implementation system at Queensland Health, the management team unable to define the project scope which generated the complexities in the project and affected the project implementation (Ismail and King, 2014). As the payroll system of QLD is very complex due to the large workforce and multiple employment awards, the prime contractor (IBM) was unable to define the project scope in the planning phase of the project.

Along with this, it can be said that the first step of SDLC also involves background analysis. In this, it is found that IBM was not effectively analyze the needs and requirements of employees at the time of planning and designing of the software. It led the failure of the project among the stakeholders because, due to ineffective analysis of needs, firm was unable to define the project and communicate the project objectives significantly to the different stakeholders. The factor of poor governance is also involved in the first step of the software development life cycle. It is because in Queensland Health, there was lack of governing structure, which was also not cleared before the implementation of project (Galliers and Leidner, 2014). It also created confusion among the stakeholders about the roles and responsibilities at the beginning.

It is found that at the time of planning, the main contractor and other stakeholders made less concern over the project scope, accountability and authorities of various parties, which created confusion among the stakeholders related to their roles and responsibility that developed one of the reasons of system failure at great extent. It is identified that during the development and implementation of payroll implementation system, the firms and contractor were not focused on the planning of the project. For example, during the project implementation, due to less effective planning about the project scope, which is one of the factors of failure, QLD Health disagreed on the project scope (Peffers, Rothenberger and Kuechler 2012). It created issues in effectively implementing the project to improve the payroll system within Queensland Health.

At the same time, the poor project management is also included in the first phase of the SDLC process. It is because during the planning phase, the contractor and firm failed to identify the implementation risks, which negatively affected the practices and activities of the project in terms of less development of these activities (Hart 2016). It also affected the implementation process of payroll system within Queensland Health.

Recommendations

From the above discussion, it can be recommended that the firm should simplify the employment awards and agreements to eliminate the complexities. It is because through the simplification of employment agreements and rewards, the firm will be able to insert information effectively and more efficiently in the payroll software package. It can also be significant in improving the effectiveness and efficiency of the payroll process (Hughes and Stewart 2013). Along with this, it is also recommended that before implanting the payroll system, firms should clearly define the lines of accountability, roles and responsibilities to each stakeholder in order to improve the system governance and structure.

At the same time, before implementing the payroll system, the firm should make pre-testing of system and check the data quality. In this, Queensland Health should perform the rigorous testing and cover most of the employees to test the pays before implementing the payroll system. it can be effective in identifying the risks associated with the payroll system that can be modified before implanting the system. Through this, the firm can increase the efficiency and reliability of the payroll system. Along with this, firm should adopt all the steps of SDLC in order to better implementation of project and to eliminate any risk prior to implement (Fowler, Beck and Brant 2012). Through this, the firm can also focus on the non-technical factors such as culture, and sharing of responsibilities in the organization, which can be beneficial in effectively implement the payroll system project.

References

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