Information Integration
Both Information Integration and Insight Creation capabilities are related to the phenomenon of business intelligence. According to Biere (2003), business intelligence is defined as the methodical and conscious transformation of data from different sources in the novel forms of result-oriented and business-driven information (p. 18). It comprises a mixture of databases, tools and vendors for creating an infrastructure which provides initial solution plus the ability to change based on the marketplace and business solution (Aghazadeh, 2015, p. 67). Business intelligence comprises four synergic capabilities: organizational memory; information integration; insight creation; and, presentation.
While organization memory places its focus on the past, the second capability which is information integration represents the ability to link the past unstructured and structured content from various sources that comprise organizational memory with the novel, real-time content. Hence, information integration capability derives its input both from organizational memory and from real-time content based on emerging events. Several features of business intelligence are related to this capability:
- Competitive benchmarking
- Monitoring of business trends
- Ability to incorporate non-quantitative data
- Text mining
- Ability to carry out enterprise-wide content search across different content types, for example, e-mails, databases and word documents (Sabherwal & Becerra-Fernandez, 2012, p. 34)
Insight creation capability involves the development of new insights used to support better decision-making in a real-time manner. While the first two capabilities mentioned above, organizational memory and information integration, are employed in the provision of knowledge, information and integrated data which constitute the raw materials necessary for decision making and insight. Insight creation as the third business intelligence capability focuses on the utilization of these raw materials to create valuable new insights and enable effective decision making based on continuous rather than periodic analysis (Sabherwal & Becerra-Fernandez, 2012, p. 36).
Therefore, we find that information integration capability facilitates insight creation capability by synthesizing and consolidating information from the past and present regarding the particular business. Information integration capability utilizes and integrates external information, unstructured information and real-time data whereby users can make connections between the various forms of information, connections which are then used in the development of new insights used within the business process. The information and material gained from such data and information within the information integration capability are the ones that directly enable the insight creation capability to come up with new insights that are not only used to facilitate effective real-time decision-making but are also used to support learning within the business process. Insights can be made through service providers or by internal analysts (Information Resources Management Association, 2016, p. 1568).
References
Aghazadeh, H. (2015). Principles of Marketology (Vol. 1; Theory). London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Biere, M. (2003). Business Intelligence for the Enterprise. Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education.
Information Resources Management Association. (2016). Business Intelligence: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications. Hershey, Pennsylvania: IGI Global.
Sabherwal, R., & Becerra-Fernandez, I. (2012). Business Intelligence: Practices, Technologies, and Management. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.