Author(s)

A. Osianlis & D.R. Arnott

Abstract

Business Intelligence (BI) and Data Warehousing (DW) are management information system that have been applied in a broad range of industries, and in a broad range of roles. Although, these system are defined in the literature as strategic system that enable organisations to achieve competitive advantage through better strategic decision making, the application of these technologies in many organisations varies considerably [5], [8] ). This paper presents a case study of an Australian regional water authority’s use of DW and B1 technologies for the management of water and waste-water services provision. Whilst the immediate business goal of the system was to automate report generation and presentation in order to meet regulatory reporting requirements, the system was progressively used to enable changes to key business processes. This was driven by recent government policy that required measurable increases in water quality to regional customers. The regulatory reporting, required to assure water businesses’ performance in providing quality water services, consisted of measures that spanned traditional function areas, incorporating GIS, water quality testing, customer relationship management and asset management data. This revealed opportunities for improving business processes that were focused on individual function areas. The DW and B1 systems also forced many of the data quality issues ‘into the open’, making it necessary to adopt a corporate-wide approach to data quality and data standards. Alignment with the business was thus achieved, enabling knowledge workers to act on the new cross-functional information, and improve the delivery of water and waste-water services to its 132,000 constituents across the region’s 16,500 square kilometres.

Keywords