Critical Contextual Success Factors for Business Intelligence: A Delphi Study on Their Relevance, Variability, and Controllability

The present article investigates critical contextual success factors that influence business intelligence (BI) system success and design in organizations with regard to their relevance, variability, and controllability. The initial set of factors is based on an analysis of extant literature and serves as the basis for further research on this topic. In contrast to previous studies, a Delphi Study provides several advantages such as the validation of possible critical factors by domain experts and the multi-dimensional view on these factors. A carefully selected expert panel investigated the factors not only by means of relevance but also assessed each factor in terms of variability and controllability. This multi-dimensional approach allowed us to identify six distinct clusters of factors with similar attributes and, hence, similar implications for practice. This paper contributes to IS research on critical success factors and system design variables in general and gives specific insights into the BI domain. The results are expected to support BI managers addressing their challenges in BI initiatives and they also provide directions for future research.