The Bundling of Business Intelligence and Analytics

ABSTRACT

Business Intelligence (BI) and analytics are often bundled together in the Information Systems (IS) literature as BI&A. We argue that BI and analytics are different information systems that are used differently, require different tools and technical skills, and are targeted at different audiences. We posit that this bundling is not relevant to the practice, rather the result of a fashion wave inspired by Gartner technology trends. We argue that such misrepresentation disassociates IS research from practice. We performed a pilot qualitative study as well as secondary data analysis on job data from Indeed.com to validate our arguments. The paper contributes to the IS research by critiquing the status quo on BI&A, which has existed since 2012. Implications of the unbundling of BI and analytics for future research and academics are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Business intelligence
• analytics
• BI&A
• fashion wave
• rigor
• relevance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Declarations

The author(s) disclose that there are no direct or indirect conflicts of interest within the three years of beginning the work or outside of this timeframe. The authors have not received any grants from funding agencies and/or research support (including salaries, equipment, supplies, reimbursement for attending symposia, and other expenses) by organizations that may gain or lose financially through publication of this manuscript. Moreover, the author(s) have no past, recent, or future employment offer(s) form organizations that may gain or lose financially through the publication of this manuscript. Additionally, the author(s) (including holdings of their spouses and children) have no financial or non-financial interests from an organization and/or individual that may gain or lose financially or otherwise from the publication of this manuscript.

Data availability

The data used in this study were extracted from Indeed.com. The authors will make the data available upon request.