I am pleased to announce that I am the founding Editor-in-Chief of the new International Journal of Business Intelligence Research (IJBIR).

The mission of the journal is to advance research in the field of business intelligence and analytics. The IJBIR is a peer-reviewed publication dedicated to the exchange of the latest academic research on all aspects of practicing and managing business intelligence in organizations. The journal will publish original research and case studies by academic, business and government contributors on strategies, practices, techniques and technologies that advance the understanding and practice of business intelligence. The focus of this journal is to identify innovative business intelligence strategies and to assess the application of theoretical concepts to real-world situations. IJBIR takes a multidisciplinary approach to the examination of business intelligence.

The journal will solicit high quality submissions that employ qualitative or quantitative research methodologies. Submissions are especially encouraged covering the following topics:

• Theories that enlighten business intelligence and decision making
  
  
• Examination of the use of analytics in support of business processes and decision making
  
  
• Issues pertaining to analyst/decision-maker interactions
  
  
• Organizational culture and its impact on business intelligence
  
  
• The relationship between knowledge management and business intelligence
  
  
• Enablers and inhibitors for business intelligence
  
  
• Group practices in business intelligence
  
  
• Knowledge transfer and sharing behaviors in business intelligence
  
  
• Business intelligence technology utilization in organizations
  
  
• Development of business intelligence architectures
  
  
• Business intelligence education
  
  
• Case studies in business intelligence
  
  
• Metrics and their effectiveness in business intelligence analyses
  
  
• Business intelligence in small and medium enterprises
  
  
• Methodologies and processes for managing business intelligence activities
  
  
• Critical success factors in business intelligence adoption and practice
  
  
• Global issues in business intelligence
  
  
• Analyses of business intelligence applications and analytics
  
  
• Data warehousing and data mining strategies for business intelligence
  
  
• Business intelligence training issues
  
  
• Critical assessments of business intelligence solutions
  
  
• Best practices in business intelligence
  
  
• Using business intelligence for security analysis and fraud detection
  
  
• Business intelligence and CRM
  
  
• Business intelligence and market basket analysis
  
  
• Retail business intelligence and analytics
  
  
• Trends in business intelligence research
  

While there are practitioner journals in this field, there is really only one other academic BI journal, and it is technical in nature. I started this journal, in part, due to my belief that BI business intelligence is not simply a technical domain, but is truly interdisciplinary in nature. Wikipedia defines business intelligence as the skills, technologies, applications, and practices used to help businesses acquire a better understanding of its commercial context. I define BI as follows:


While technology is an enabler for business intelligence, it is not a prerequisite since surely BI (in some form) was practiced in organizations before the advent of computing. My definition puts business intelligence in a larger context. It involves such things as knowledge discovery and knowledge transfer, analytics, simulation, databases, data mining and process management. However, it also encompasses behavioral matters such as analyst/decision-maker dynamics, cultural and contextual issues, decision-maker characteristics and group behavior concerns. My point is that BI is not a synonym for data mining, data warehousing or other technologies or applications. Rather, business intelligence is a complicated set of processes that focuses on the discovery and identification of circumstances whose analyses may prompt decisions and actions that seek to produce beneficial results for the firm and/or its stakeholders.

This viewpoint argues that business intelligence involves processes, people, technology and analytics as well the interaction between them. It also implies that technical components alone do not produce action; rather the BI process does. My point is that we need to embrace this perspective on business intelligence so that we can better explain to management what BI is and what is needed to make it effective in contributing to decision making. I see BI as a verb, not a noun! That is, BI is about analyzing, deciding, and doing. Its essence cannot be defined as a thing (e.g., a set of software skills).

I have received emails from some of my peers asking me whether this BI journal is in any way different from existing journals that examine data mining and data warehousing. My response is, of course, “yes.” It seems that many people in the academic community as in industry have adopted a viewpoint that BI is a synonym for a set of technologies.

I intend to use this journal as a means to expand BI awareness. As I’ve said, I will do this by soliciting papers that examine business intelligence from multiple perspectives. My intent is to use the journal to as a vehicle to investigate what elements are critical in BI activities and to analyze the issues that affect them.

I expect that many of the papers submitted to and appearing in the journal will examine theoretical as well as practical concerns. When dealing with theoretical matters, I will be asking academicians to include in their papers a discussion of the practical implications of their research for BI management.

I hope practitioners will read and even subscribe to this journal as well. One of the most important issues we face is to help inform senior management that business intelligence is a developing discipline where BI academic curriculums and research are being initiated and evolving. Awareness of these activities will help to legitimize BI as a field of study, and hopefully this will inevitably serve to better define what educational requirements and position attributes should be included in future BI position descriptions.

When I go online to job search sites and I perform a search using the term business intelligence in quotes, I inevitably get a listing of position descriptions that define the potential candidate’s application software skill requirements. This has led me to the belief that we are understating what BI is and reinforcing the practice of BI being stereotyped as simply a type of IT job. As I point out, it isn’t that simple.

By subscribing to, reading, contributing to and/or sharing this new journal, I hope that you will use it as evidence to help me in my campaign to better inform others as to what BI should be and the role it should perform in organizations. As long as we allow people to believe that BI is simply a synonym for a set of application software skills and technologies, we are undermining BI’s real potential value to organizations and we allowing our own potential contributions and value to the firms to be underestimated and underappreciated.

Recent articles by Richard Herschel

• Logical Arguments and Business Intelligence
• A Business Intelligence Report is a “Thesis” that Requires Effective Writing
• Business Intelligence and Decision-Making Issues
• Business Intelligence Kindling