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Using Business Intelligence Solutions for
Achieving Organization’s Strategy: Arab
International University Case Study
Mouhib Alnoukari
Arab International University, Damascus, Syria

investment (ROI) [22].
Abstract—Business Intelligence (BI) is becoming an important
An important question that was raised by many researchers
IT framework that can help organizations managing, developing
[16, 18] as to what was the main reason pushing companies to
and communicating their intangible assets such as information
search for BI solutions, and what differentiates BI from
and knowledge. Thus it can be considered as an imperative
Decision Support System (DSS) systems? In fact, over the last
framework in the current knowledge-based economy arena.
decades, organizations developed a lot of Operational
In this paper, we will explain the role BI is playing in
providing organizations with a way to plan and achieve their
Information Systems (OIS), resulting in a huge amount of
business strategy. We will experiment this role using a case study
disparate data that are located in different geographic
in the field of high education, especially helping one of the new
locations, on different storage platforms, with different forms.
private university in Syria (Arab
International
This situation prevents organization from building a common,
University)planning and achieving their business strategy.
integrated, correlated, and immediate access to information at

its global level. DSS evolved during the 1970s, with the
Index Terms—Business Intelligence, Data Mining, Strategic
Management.
objective of providing organization’s decision makers with the

required data to support decision-making process. In the
1980s, Executive Information System (EIS) evolved to
I. INTRODUCTION
provide executive officers with the information needed to
support strategic decision-making process. BI evolved during
usiness Intelligence is becoming vital for many the 1990s as data-driven DSS, sharing some of the objectives
B organizations, especially those have extremely large and tools of DSS and EIS systems.
amount of data. Decision makers depend on detailed and
BI architectures include: data warehousing, business
accurate information when they have to make decisions. BI
analytics, business performance management, and data
can provide decision makers with such accurate information,
mining. Most of BI solutions are dealing with structured data
and with the appropriate tools for data analysis.
[1]. However, many application domains require the use of
BI is an umbrella term that combines architectures, tools,
unstructured data (or at least semi-structured data), e.g.
data bases, applications, practices, and methodologies [20, 6].
customer e-mails, web pages, competitor information, sales
Gartner Group (1996) (the first company used BI in marker in
reports, research paper repositories, and so on [4, 21].
the mid-1990) defined BI as “information and applications
Any BI solution can be divided into the following three
available broadly to employees, consultants, customers, layers [1]: data layer, which is responsible for storing
suppliers, and the public. The key to thriving in a competitive
structured and unstructured data for decision support
marketplace is staying ahead of the competition. Making purposes. Structured data is usually stored in Operational Data
sound business decisions based on accurate and current Stores (ODS), Data Warehouses (DW), and Data Marts (DM).
information takes more than intuition. Data analysis, Unstructured data are handled by using Content and
reporting, and query tools can help business users dig in the
Document Management Systems. Data are extracted from
mine of data to extract and/or synthesize valuable information
operational data sources, e.g. SCM, ERP, CRM, or from
from it – today these tools collectively fall into category called
external data sources, e.g. market research data. Data are
Business Intelligence” [9]. Many organizations who extracted from data sources that are transformed and loaded
developed successful BI solutions, such as Continental into DW by ETL tools. Logic layer provides functionality to
Airlines, have seen investment in BI generate increases in
analyze data and provide knowledge. This includes OLAP,
revenue and cost saving equivalent to 1000% return on data mining. And finally access layer, realized by some sort of

software portals (BI portal).
Manuscript received September 30, 2009.
Mouhib Alnoukari is with the Arab International University, Damascus,
Our main focus in this paper is to explain the role of BI
Syria (phone: +963-015-2050; fax: +963-015-860385; e-mail: m-
solution that helps organizations in formulating,
noukari@aiu.edu.sy).
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ALNOUKARI
implementing, and achieving their strategy. Many researchers
the need to position the firm in an external marketplace where
[5, 17, 10, 12] were highlighting the IT alignment in general,
growth can take place, and functional integration which
with business, without specifying what are the technologies,
addresses how to best structure internal systems to execute the
and tools that can help organizations in achieving their business strategy of the firm [12].
strategy.

Fig. 1. IT alignment with Business Strategy [5].
The rest of this paper will be organized as the follows, the
next section will explain the role BI is taking as an IT-enabler

to achieve organization’s strategy; such role will be
Fig. 2. Strategic Alignment Model
highlighted by using strategic alignment model proposed by

Henderson and Venkatraman (1993), explaining how this
IT alignment is not simply formulating IT strategy to fit
alignment can help organizations in becoming flexible business strategy. It has to consider external forces and the
organizations, concluding how could BI solution provide environment uncertainty. Such alignment helps organizations
organizations with sustainable competitive advantages. BI role
becoming flexible organizations.
as a strategic solution will be then experimented using a case
As a result of accelerations in the rates of innovation and
study at the higher education field (Arab International technological changes, markets evolve rapidly, products’ life
University), explaining how the solution implemented at this
cycles get shorter and innovation becomes the main source of
university helped achieving their main strategic goal, competitive advantage. Therefore, organizations seek
improving quality in their higher education system.
flexibility to meet market demands.
Drnevich et al. (2006) explained that flexibility-based
II. BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE AS AN IT ENABLER TO ACHIEVE
perspectives evolved from Schumpeter’s concept of creative
ORGANIZATION’S STRATEGY
destruction [8]. Operationalization of these perspectives in
In recent years, IT in general, and BI as a strategic strategic management is done through dynamic capabilities
framework, is becoming increasingly important in strategic
and real options views. Dynamic capabilities view refers to
management, supporting business strategies. IT-enabled
the firm’s abilities to maintain and adapt its internal resources
strategic management addresses the IT role in strategy to environment changes to maintain sustainability of
formulation and implementation processes [19]. Drucker, the
competitive advantages. It refers to the capability of acquiring
pioneer of management by objectives, was one of the first
new ways of competitive advantage. It involves continuous
who recognized the dramatic changes IT brought to search, innovation and adaptation of firm resources and
management. Strategic management theories were largely capabilities to uncover and tape new sources of competitive
geared towards gaining competitive advantages. Porter (1979)
advantages. Real options view is effective in dealing with
proposed a number of very influential strategic analysis issues of uncertainty. It allows the firm to defer investment
models, such as the five-forces model of competition, the
decisions until uncertainties are resolved.
value chain and generic competitive strategies. Porter (1979)
New IT organizational adoption facilitates the transition
said “The essence of strategy formulation is coping with into flexible organizations. Business Intelligence is one of
competition” [14].
these new IT frameworks that can help such transition. BI
Many researchers have indicated the importance of IT technologies become a source of competitive advantages and
alignment with business strategy in order to enhance corporate
differentiation [13, 11]. Tang and Walters (2006) mentioned
strategy [5, 17], (Figure1).
that competitive advantage became a hot strategic
Strategic Alignment Model developed by Henderson and
management topic [19]. They also view that generating new
Venkatraman (1993) was one of the first models that knowledge in a continued way is the single way to obtain
described in an explicit way the interrelationships between
competitive advantage.
business strategies and IT strategies [10]. This model is based
There are many reasons for organization to adopt business
on two main concepts (Figure2): strategic fit that recognizes
intelligence systems in order to achieve organization’s
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strategy:
model [2].
• Business Intelligence is considered as an extension
The BI solution could provide university’s top management
to corporate strategy activities. Herring (1988) with reports to uncover trends in the students and instructors’
considered that “Strategy can be no better than the
performance in a manner that would be impossible or at least
information from which it is derived” [11].
extremely tedious without data warehouses and data mining.
• Data analytics can be used effectively to build future
business strategy.
• Data analytics and data mining could reveal hidden
reasons for some deficiencies as well as possible
high-yielding new investments.
• Corporations need to be sure that they are receiving
the right information related to their long-term
strategy.
Herring (1988) considered that business intelligence can
help organizations in [11]:
• Supporting the strategic decision making process of
the corporation.
• Supporting corporation SWOT analysis
•

Supporting strategic planning and processes.
Fig. 3. AIU students clustered according to their accumulative
All the mentioned benefits should provide organizations
GPA & their credit hours.
with sustainable competitive advantages.
One of the main strategic goals of the AIU is to enhance
III. ARAB INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY BI SOLUTION
students GPA. Figure 3 shows the correlation between
Arab International University (AIU) is a new private student’s accumulative GPA and their credit hours. It shows
university in Syria. Being a 3-year old university, it began to
that students with higher accumulative hours are getting
find difficulties in managing the huge data deployed from its
higher accumulative GPA. On the other hand it was very clear
different information systems. The academic system, financial
that there is strong correlation between students’ level of
system, HR system, and Quality Assurance Automated English and accumulative GPA as shown in figure 4.
System (QAAS) system, are at the core of the university daily
Clustering each faculty’s students according to their
operations [3].
cumulative GPAs, and their completed hours helps the
As most of the university information systems were university’s academic advisors focus on special groups,
provided from different sources, there was an urgent need to
especially the group of students that are likely to drop out
integrate data from all these sources into one data warehouse
(Figure 5). Correlation between credit hours and AGPA
in a manner that could help the university in making use of all
changes shows a clear picture about the optimal number of the
data to assure quality
credit hours the students would take to increase their AGPA.
The data gathered in order to produce the university BI
Figure 5 Shows that this ranges between 2-12 and 20-22
solution and help in enhancing education quality are:
hours. This provides the AIU decision makers with the
• Academic data (registration, examination, reasons to find out how to help students to enhance their
enrollment, etc).
AGPAs while getting the required credit hours in each
• Financial data (student fees, staff salaries, orders,
sales, etc.).
• Human Resources data (staff personal information).
• QAAS data (student feedback, GPA differences,
drop ratio, plan completion, industry feedback,
etc).
An enterprise data warehouse is built to hold all the
previous data. The data sources were provided from different
sources (Oracle databases, SQL Server data bases, excel). The
data warehouse was built using Oracle 11g data base.
The ETL was built by using ETL package in Oracle
Warehouse Builder.
The solution developed (by AIU developers) followed
ASD-DM paradigm for BI solution. ASD-DM paradigm

suggests three agile modeling steps (specifically Adaptive
Fig. 4. Relationship between AIU students’ accumulative GPA
Software Development (ASD)) to develop a successful BI
& their English level.
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ALNOUKARI
semester (which varies between 16-19 hours).These results
enhancing the total number of enrolled courses
helped AIU to update their education system in order to force
(Figure 7). This has an immediate financial
students to enhance their English level by adding more
revenue increase.
English teaching hours at the early phases.
AIU BI solution is able to provide AIU managers with a set
of reports that can help them evaluating the university current
strategy. AIU BI solution’s reporting includes:

Fig. 7. Currents enrolled university courses.


Fig. 5. Credit hours relation’s with the AGPA changes.
• Analysis of the total number of students’ presence
per different time ranges per days helps AIU
• Predicting students GPAs. Different algorithms
achieving one of its strategic goals by enhancing
were used for prediction. Evaluation of the results
services provided to its students and optimizing
for each algorithm permit choosing the best
costs (Figure 8). Such analysis helps AIU
method with the highest predictive confidence.
preparing the optimal plans for transportation,
SVA algorithm was chosen with more than 70%
restaurants, library services, and others.
predictive confidence (Figure 6 shows GPA
• Identifying students likely to drop out using the
prediction deviation errors). This also helps
students predicted GPA results (Figure 6).
predicting the average GPA per each faculty,
• Classifications of students’ results according to
which would help AIU preparing plans to enhance
different subjects (Figure 4).
the overall performance.


Fig. 8. AIU students attendance per different time ranges per days.
Fig. 6. GPA prediction deviation errors chart.

• Market basket analysis report helps in preparing the
time table for each semester. The resultant time
IV. CONCLUSION
table would contain a set of highly interrelated
courses that students require. This means that two
In this paper, we explained the use of BI solution in
courses with high association correlation don’t formulating, implementing, and achieving organization’s
overlap in the time table, also these two courses
strategy. We also demonstrated how BI solution could provide
should be enrolled in the same semester, and not
organizations with sustainable competitive advantages.
wait for one or two semesters. This analysis helps
This work can be extended by integrating knowledge
achieving one of the main AIU strategic goals by
management with BI solutions, as it can help deriving more
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value (knowledge) from the explosion of textual information,
[22] J. Zack, R. K. Rainer, and T. E. Marshall, “Business Intelligence: An
which can add more inputs to the strategic decision.
Analysis of the Literature”, Information Systems Management, 25: pp. 121–
131, 2007.
Another important factor is the use of agile methodologies

in order to manage the high-speed high-change current
environment. Such complex and dynamic environment highly


affect organization’s strategy.


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Document Outline

• INTRODUCTION
• Business Intelligence as an IT Enabler to Achieve Organizations Strategy
• Arab International University BI Solution
• Conclusion
• References

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