Relationships between ERP and Business Intelligence: an Empirical Research on Two Different Approaches

Many studies acknowledge the growing role of Business Intelligence Systems (BIS) deployment in supporting business decision-making processes. This development involves both transactional systems, such as the implementation of ERP, and BI models, as well as reporting tools, business analytics, and data miming. The hypothesis is that the decision making process depends on the quality of all the links before the BIS implementation, such as the ERP implementation and upgrade, the organization of the business data, the deep awareness of the business, the desired level of BIS to implement and upgrade (i.e. reporting, predictive analysis, data mining, and so forth). The aim of the research is to evaluate the main reasons that drive companies to implement and upgrade ERP and BIS, in light of potential relationships among them. A comparative case study, made for the purpose of this research, shows two different approaches to ERP/BIS. At the end, some considerations about them are discussed.