From Management Information Systems to Business Intelligence: The Development of Management Information Needs

Despite the advances in IT, information systems intended for management informing did not uniformly fulfil the increased expectations of users; this can be said mostly about complex information needs. Although some of the technologies for supporting complicated insights, like management decision support systems and technologies, experienced reduction in interest both from researchers and practitioners, this did not reduce the importance of well-supported business informing and decision making. Being attributed to the group of intelligent systems and technologies, decision support (DS) technologies have been largely supplemented by business intelligence (BI) technologies. Both types of technologies are supported by respective information technologies, which often appear to be quite closely related. The objective of this paper is to define relations between simple and complex informing intended to satisfy different sets of needs and provided by different sets of support tools. The paper attempts to put together decision support and business intelligence technologies, based on common goals of sense-making and use of advanced analytical tools. A model of two interconnected cycles has been developed to relate the activities of decision support and business intelligence. Empirical data from earlier research is used to direct possible further insights into this area.