Business intelligence as the support of decision-making processes in e-commerce systems environment

Suchánek, Petr and Slaninova, Kateřina and Bucki, Robert (2010): Business intelligence as the support of decision-making processes in e-commerce systems environment. Published in: Proceedings of the Workshop: Methods and Applications of Artificial Intelligence No. ISBN 978-83-62466-02-3 (November 2010): pp. 5-20.

Abstract

The present state of world economy urges managers to look for new methods, which can help to start the economic growth. To achieve this goal, managers use standard as well as new procedures. The fundamental prerequisite of the efficient decision-making processes are actual and right information. Managers need to monitor past information and current actual information to generate trends of future development based on it. Managers always should define strictly what do they want to know, how do they want to see it and for what purpose do they want to use it. Only in this case they can get right information applicable to efficient decision-making. Generally, managers´ decisions should lead to make the customers´ decision-making process easier. More frequently than ever, companies use e-commerce systems for the support of their business activities. In connection with the present state and future development, cross-border online shopping growth can be expected. To support this, companies will need much better systems providing the managers adequate and sufficient information. This type of information, which is usually multidimensional, can be provided by the Business Intelligence (BI) technologies. Besides special BI systems, some of BI technologies are obtained in quite a few of ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems. One of the crucial questions is whether should companies and firms buy or develop special BI software, or whether they can use BI tools contained in some ERP systems. In respect of this, there is a question if the modern ERP systems can provide the managers sufficient possibilities relating to ad-hoc reporting, static and dynamic reports and OLAP analyses. A one of the main goals of this article is to show and verify Business Intelligence tools of Microsoft Dynamics NAV for the support of decision-making in terms of the cross-border online purchasing. Pursuant to above-mentioned, in this article authors deal with problems relating to managers´ decision-making, customers´ decision-making and a support of its using the BI tools contained in ERP system Microsoft Dynamics NAV. A great deal of this article is aimed at area of multidimensional data which are the source data of e-commerce systems.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Business Intelligence, decision-making, e-commerce system, cross-border online purchasing, multi-dimensional data, reporting, data visualization
• Subjects: C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods > C8 - Data Collection and Data Estimation Methodology ; Computer Programs > C88 - Other Computer Software; L - Industrial Organization > L1 - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance > L10 - General; C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods > C1 - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General > C19 - Other; C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods > C4 - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics > C49 - Other; C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods > C8 - Data Collection and Data Estimation Methodology ; Computer Programs > C89 - Other; F - International Economics > F1 - Trade > F18 - Trade and Environment; D - Microeconomics > D7 - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making > D70 - General; O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth > O3 - Innovation ; Research and Development ; Technological Change ; Intellectual Property Rights > O30 - General; E - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics > E1 - General Aggregative Models > E17 - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications; D - Microeconomics > D8 - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty > D80 - General; M - Business Administration and Business Economics ; Marketing ; Accounting ; Personnel Economics > M2 - Business Economics > M21 - Business Economics

References

[1] Bora, C. (2009). Advantages and Disadvantages of Electronic Commerce (e-commerce). From Advantages and Disadvantages of Electronic Commerce (e-commerce). Retrieved December 13, 2009. URL: <http://www.buzzle.com/articles/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-electronic-commerce-e-commerce.html>

[2] Brown, A. (1999). eCOMMERCE - Components of the Internet. From eCOMMERCE - Components of the Internet. Retrieved December 13, 2009. URL: <http://www.bizforum.org/whitepapers/sterling-001.htm>

[3] Bucki, R. (2007). Information Linguistic Systems. Parkland, Florida: Network Integrators Associates, p. 102.

[4] Bucki, R. (2008). Mathematical Modelling of Allocation Processes as an Effective Tool to Support Decision Making. Information and Telecommunication Systems, Polish Information Processing Society, The Beskidy Group, Academy of Computer Science and Management, Bielsko-Biała, No. 17.

[5] Businessdictionary.com. (2010). Sales Analysis. BusinessDictionary.com, Retrieved January 10th, 2010.

[6] El-Assal, S. (2008). Microsoft Dynamics NAV. Vieweg+Teubner Verlag. 304 p.

[7] Gartner. (2009). Gartner Reveals Five Business Intelligence Predictions for 2009 and Beyond. In Analysts Discuss Business Intelligence Challenges and Opportunities at Gartner Business Intelligence Summit 2009, 20-22 January in The Hague, Netherlands. Retrieved 2nd January 2010.

[8] Harrison, E. F. (1998). The Managerial Decision-Making Process. Cincinnati: South-Western College Pub. 576 p.

[9] Interprise Solution. (2010). System manager. Retrieved January 18th, 2010.

[10] Larson, B. (2008). Delivering Business Intelligence with Microsoft SQL Server 2008. McGraw-Hill Osborne Media. 792 p.

[11] MSDN. (2009). Dynamic and Static Reports. Microsoft Developer Network, 2009. Retrieved December 27th, 2009.

[12] Murthy, N. M. (2001). Technologies for E-Commerce: An Overview. Informatica – 2001, National Seminar on Ecommerce. New Delhi: CMC Limited, 2001. Retrieved December 14, 2009.

[13] Olsen, H. (2003). Supporting customers' decision-making process. Retrieved December 9th, 2009.

[14] Oracle Database. (2010). Documentation Library. Oracle® OLAP Application Developer's Guide 10g Release 1 (10.1). Part Number B10333-02. Retrieved January 17th, 2010.

[15] Paredes, J. (2009). The Multidimensional Data Modeling Toolkit: Making Your Business Intelligence Applications Smart with Oracle OLAP. OLAP World Press, 2009. 330 p.

[16] Pareek, D. (2007). Business Intelligence for Telecommunications. New York: Taylor & Francis Group. 312 p.

[17] Parfeni, L. (2009). Cross-Border Online Shopping in Europe Fails Three Out of Five Times. Retrieved December 27th, 2009. From Cross-Border Online Shopping in Europe Fails Three Out of Five Times.

[18] Post, F.H., Nielson, G.M., Bonneau, G.P. (2002). Data Visualization: The State of the Art. In Proceedings of the 4th Dagstuhl Seminar on Scientific Visualization. Research paper TU delft.

[19] Richardson, W. (2009). Benefits and Limitations of E-business. From Benefits and Limitations of E-business. Retrieved December 13, 2009.

[20] Rossi, M. T. (2004). Minitrack: E-Commerce Systems Development Methodologies. Proceedings of the 37th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Big Island.

[21] SRC, d.o.o. (2009). Business Intelligence Advantages. Ljubljana. Retrieved January 2nd, 2010.

[22] Wikianswers. (2009). What is the definition of ad-hoc? Retrieved January 2nd, 2010.

[23] Wikipedia. (2009). MOLAP. Retrieved January 2nd, 2010.