Business Analysis for Business Intelligence

Discuss about the Business Analysis for Business Intelligence.

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 decision making for shor, medium and long term. Business intelligence identifies opportunity and implementing an effective strategy based on 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 as competitive intelligence since it can help in provide significant information about not only ones 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’ action. 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).  

Advantages of the Business Intelligence

Information processing is the basis of achieving 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 the Business intelligence, the company gets correct data if the system is effectively maintained, updating of information, and forecasting, which allows organization to see what possible scenarios it could encounter in the future, therefore; it helps to remove the guesswork and take right actions for the managers (Chong, 2014). Along with this, business intelligence users can get an immediate answer to business’s problems and question. It helps to take a quick decision without losing valuable time. One of the biggest advantage of business intelligence that it provides business states of the period that how much 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 objective and survive in the market. A view of customer behavior and experience provides analyze which helps to make the plan better for company’s future.  

Business intelligence provides information that 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 company’s capabilities, weaknesses, and strength against 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, 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, and coupons or other rewards by the retail business in exchange for customers’ participation in the company’s activities. Business intelligence and use of information system can facilitate this effectively. The royal card identifies the customers and provides information about what customers purchased (Zikmund, et al., 2013). For an example, Woolworths decide to make an offer for their customer ‘$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, future and helps the organization to make a decision.  Furthermore, retailers can make a better decision for the business. Data mining takes out useful information from the large piles of past and present data that may not be easily decipherable. These informations are 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 the easy decision for future by data mining application 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 the 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 large workforce and multiple employment awards and agreement, which needs great attention to implement effectively. It is also identified that in the project, the main contractor (IBM) used the same SAP HR system that was used for the Queensland Housing with some modification (Stair and Reynolds 2015). But, the requirements of Queensland Health are different from the housing that also generates the complexities in the payroll system and lead to failure.

At the same time, it is also identified that poor governance of implementation system was also a factor that lead to failure of payroll implementation project. It is because at Queensland Health, the governance structure among the stakeholders was not so effective that created the 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 lead to the poor governance and affected the implementation of 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 were no support by the Queensland Health, who was the system user. This confusion among the stakeholder made this project as 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 prime contractor (IBM), which created issues for IBM to estimate the business requirements, which ultimately resulted in the 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 the Queensland Health, the absence of periodic review created difficulties in the system testing and implementation in order to implement the project on right time (Hart 2016). In this, the disagreement upon the project scope from the side of stakeholders also created issues to implement the project and also increased the cost of the project.  

The poor management and pre-testing process also a contribution factor of payroll implantation system failure at Queensland Health. It is found that at Queensland Health, the pre-implementation and testing process were unable to identify the risk in the system. In this, before the implementation, the critical business activities were not developed adequately due to lack of effective methodology. It also negatively affected the implementation process of the project and cause a failure of the project within the firm. Along with this, in the project, there were also no monitoring and managing committee that can 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 consideration 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 that also contributed in the failure of the project. It is found that in order to make effective implementation of payroll implementation system, SAP recommended a full parallel pay run comparison between old and new system (Peffers, Rothenberger and Kuechler 2012). But, the project board does not accept this recommendation due to size and complexities of undertaking the tasks, which lead the project failure.

At the same time, poor risk management was also one of the factors that contributed in the project failure. It is identified that before the implementation of project, a full risk profile was undertaken by the stakeholders but, this risk profile was unable to identify the level of risks at what extent. Along with this, the risk profile was also not cleared whether the risk can be materialize 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 the project failure among the stakeholder. 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 in the failure of the payroll implementation system. It is because at Queensland Health, employees were engaged in the 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 lead 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 align 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 important role in developing and maintaining effective information software, which increases the effectiveness of firm in the market and also provides competitive advantages.

The first phase of SDLC is related to the 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 existing system and plans the actions to resolve these issues significantly. This phase is also effective for the software developer or organization planning about the human resources as well as 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 is found that in the payroll implementation system at Queensland Health, the management team unable to define project scope that 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 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 analyzed the needs and requirements of employee at the time of planning and designing of the software. It led the failure of project among the stakeholders because, due to ineffective analysis of needs, firm 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 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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