Success factors of business intelligence and dashboards to improve performance in higher education

Abstract

Information overload is a recognised phenomenon related to the continuous increase of data that need to be dealt with. This overload can be managed using dashboards (DB), which are considered some of the most useful tools in business intelligence (BI), merging concepts such as scorecards to assist stakeholders and employees to improve performance and make the appropriate decisions. However, many software vendors do not draw the necessary level of attention to the effectiveness and usefulness of DB; instead, they promote the ability to visualise as much data as possible for marketing purposes, and they focus on display features and visualisation mechanisms. Also, there is a limited number of studies that investigate the use of BI and DB in higher education (HE) to improve decision-making and enhance performance. Having a better understanding of these technologies in the HE context boosts our comprehension of critical factors and measures, and helps us to visualise them appropriately, which in turn improves performance. For this complex and multidimensional research area, triangulation is applied using qualitative and quantitative approaches to gather insights, modify the presented factors, or identify new ones to construct the framework. In more detail, the literature review is used to build a holistic understanding of the proposed framework of the success factors. After that, a qualitative approach is adopted to investigate and validate the framework. Then, the final version of the framework is presented after applying quantitative methodology with an alternative group of participants to confirm the final version of the framework. The case study approach is used to evaluate and introduce a list of metrics to measure the factors presented in the framework. The measures of these factors are evaluated and constructed by applying goal question metrics (GQM) within three case studies.
In terms of results, it is clear that almost all the proposed factors are important and belong to the proposed perspectives, highlighting the use of balanced scorecards (BSC) in measuring the success factors of BI and DB. In light of this, a framework for successfully using BI and DB is constructed by
triangulating the literature review, expert reviews, and questionnaires. In addition, the instrument that includes metrics for the success factors framework is introduced.

More information

Identifiers

Catalogue record

Export record