Abstract

This paper entails an analysis of the influence of adopting user-centred design in business intelligence (BI) application development. The purpose of the research is to answer the following question: does the integration of user-centred methodologies into BI re-engineering translate to the development of a sustainable BI system? A combination of research methods was applied in the pursuit of answers to this question. This paper surmounted the hurdles of user-developer alienation, through undertaking application development while involving all stakeholders throughout all the stages of development from initiation to implementation, ensuring a collaborative environment and collective idea evolution. While the financial benefits of such stakeholder collaboration were not directly or promptly discernible, the paper covered details of the non-financial benefits easily discernible – such as application acceptance and a sense of ownership among users, which essentially projects to longer life spans for application products. Comparing the findings, in summing up, the research confirmed that, indeed, user-centred design does lead to sustainable BI systems. Further validity and reliability tests undertaken indicated that the findings could well be deemed both accurate and reliable.

Key words: User-centred design, enterprise reporting, sustainable business intelligence, re-engineering.