Högskolan i Skövde

Organisations today are working in an increasingly competitive environment where business success rests on the ability to make high quality decisions. Consequently, comprehensive knowledge about the organisation itself as well as the market in which it operates is required. Data warehouse (DW)-based business intelligence (BI) solutions can fulfil this need by integrating data from internal and external sources to provide useful insights that will assist organisational key-players in their decision-making. The specific incorporation of syndicate data (which is a type of external data) is particularly important because it enriches data content and maximises its full value. Although previous research strongly indicates that supplementing internal data with SD enhances the decision capabilities of an organisation and gives it a competitive edge in the marketplace, the literature on SD incorporation itself is of a very limited scope. Therefore, the aim of this work is to explore current practices in SD incorporation into DW-based BI solutions. A questionnaire study on the identification, acquisition, integration and usage of SD was conducted with BI consultants. Besides confirming that SD integration into DW-based BI solutions is common, the results also provide insights on how to identify SD suppliers, different data acquisition approaches, data distribution methods, integration approaches, types of SD, and SD application areas that are being used. Propositions for future work, which will extend the findings accounted for in this work, are also included.