Processes and business intelligence systems

Organizations accomplish their goals within the organizational structure by processing input into output in order to generate business and fulfill the needs of their customers . An organizational process is a collection of activities that is performed in order to reach a certain organizational goal or business objective (operational, strategic, tactical).

This transformation process adds a margin of value (referred to as the value chain model), enriches input and processes the input in a way that the output is more valuable compared to the input (Porter, 1985).

People, equipment, materials, money and information

[1] The main prerequisites to be able to process input into output are people, equipment, materials, money and information. A process-oriented view can be accomplished by linking the organizational process structure to dimensions of the multidimensional model [2]. This is necessary because the processes are often not explicitly discernible within the database of the organization, they might exists in the workflow management system.

Prerequisites should be allocated to dimensions

Furthermore, the prerequisites can also be allocated to a particular dimension. This will enable the representation of the flows of the process in an intuitive and suitable way to the business intelligence user, which will satisfy the criteria of attractiveness of a user interface (Preece, 1994) of the business intelligence environment.

Symbols and icons

Icons and symbols that refer to these prerequisites can very well depict measures that are related to people, for example absence through illness, education level and labor turnover. Additionally, this will increase the attractiveness and facilitates the recognition process (Norman, 1988). Attractiveness is an important criterion, especially for the senior manager, since the use of the computer in the boardroom is not yet established. Nowadays we have our mobile devices to access the business intelligence platform with KPIs.

Processes can be performed across the organizational structure

Without prerequisites, the organizations cannot function i.e. process input into output. Organizational processes take place within the organizational structure but are not limited to particular parts of the structure. Processes can be performed across many departments. 2. Finally, there exist primary and secondary processes. In relation to the entire organization, they can be active in the processing of input to output or they may serve as a supporting process management for the primary processes.

---

[1] Today knowledge is considered a production factor as well. Knowledge enables the production of information and is a collection of mutually related information elements and the competence that enables derivation of information (Van der Spek, 1994).

[2] In part of this study, I have designed a domain model that accomplish this feature by making a distinct class Process that can be linked to the dimension class.