Available online at www.sciencedirect.

com

ScienceDirect
Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 124 (2014) 562 567

SIM2013

Social Business Intelligence: A New Perspective for Decision

Makers
Mihaela Munteana*, Liviu Gabriel Cabua, Vlad Rncioga
a

West University of Timisoara, bd. V. Prvan 4, Timisoara 300223, Romania

Abstract
This article presents a Social Business Intelligence approach, the theoretical demarche being supported by a practical
example. The general framework for defining the social perspective is subject of the present debate, the social data being
modelled within a data warehouse schema. Certainly, social data is not the only data source of the Business Intelligence value
chain, but it defines a new perspective for decision makers.

Authors. Published
Publishedby
byElsevier
ElsevierLtd.
Ltd.Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.
2014
2014 The
The Authors.
Selection
peer-reviewunder
underresponsibility
responsibilityofofSIM
SIM2013
2013/12th
InternationalSymposium
SymposiumininManagement.
Management.
Selection and
and peer-review
/ 12th International
Keywords: Business Intelligence; social data; Social Business Intelligence; decision making

1. Business Intelligence for Decision Support

Business Intelligence (BI) is an umbrella term for various business managing processes based on wellinformed decisions, which lead to high performance level within organizations (Brohman, 2000), (McKnights,
2004), (Melfert, Winter, & Klesse, 2004), (Mukles, 2009). Considered the art of gaining business advantage from
data, BI covers verticals like 'Business Analysis', 'Enterprise Reporting' and 'Performance Management'
(Sabherwal & Becera-Fernandez, 2011). In terms of a value chain, BI can be described as a value proposition that
helps organizations in their decision making processes (Brohman, 2000).
BI initiatives are challenging tasks, therefore should be treated carefully; nowadays, the BI governance
concept has been introduced to define the process to be followed in order to prioritize BI requests along different
criteria such: Project ROI, organizational budget, expertise of the team, people availability, infrastructure capacity
and organizational politics. BI activities are monitored; performance measured, and according to the BI
objectives directions of action are provided (Guiterrez, 2006). Decisions are made by the BI governance

* Mihaela Muntean. Tel.: +40-256-592-534; fax: +40-256-592-500.

E-mail address: mihaela.muntean@feaa.uvt.ro

1877-0428 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.

Selection and peer-review under responsibility of SIM 2013 / 12th International Symposium in Management.
doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.02.520

Mihaela Muntean et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 124 (2014) 562 567

committee, this board being responsible for aligning corporate strategic initiatives and processes with BI
applications, investment, and usage (Larson & Matney, 2007), (Muntean, Muntean, & Cabu, 2013).
As previously mentioned, data represents a valuable asset, total indispensable for decision makers (Kaplan &
Norton, 1996). Traditionally, BI applications allow users to acquire knowledge from company-internal data
through various technologies. The 'explosion of data', making reference to the volume, variaty and velocity of the
existing data, has determined the transition to big data and involves new forms of BI (Blomme, 2012).
2. Social Business Intelligence
Nowadays, people feel confortable to exchange data and viewpoints through social environments. According
to (Harrysson, Metayer, & Sarrazin, 2012) companies can develop a social intelligence based on the
information, ideas disemminated through social-networking by their employes, customers and perhaps others
external players. A positive corporate culture, which encourages creativity and innovation, promotes virtual
communities like discussion areas and stimulates organizations members to act constructively within. The
established discussion areas cover the entire companys domain of activity and interest and are sustained by a
wide range of social tools, systems and technologies. The collected social media content will be analyzed and
processed in order to obtain valuable knowledge that will enrich the companys insight. Implicitly, decisions will
be emproved. The process of collecting social data, analyzing it in order to make better decisions is referred as
Social Business Intelligence (SBI) (Palmer, Mahidhar, Galizia, & Sharma, 2013), (Kobielus, 2007), in fact a BI
approach enriched with social intelligence.
The discussion areas are online collaborative communities for example, problems identified are posted
and recomandations for solving those problems are made, as well as actions are proposed. Thanks to the
collaborative potential of the social tools, decidents, experts and any members of the organizational community
are assisted in delivering their contributions. Early interventions are possible, that might influence the final
decisions. The orientation of SBI on to answer questions beyond the collaborative approach of decision making
processes, facilitates the deployment of foresight scenarios and therefore contributes to a business culture that is
anticipatory and opportunistic with regard to operations, products and customers (Kobielus, 2007). Integrating
social data with traditional internal and external data sets a new dimension that can be introduced into the
decision-making framework.
Marketing executives have discovered the benefits of social media listening (Fig. 1), proper tools, systems and
technologies helping to separate the signal from the noise (Jain, 2012).

Fig. 1. Social listening. Integrating social data within the BI approach [adapted from (Jain, 2012)]

563

564

Mihaela Muntean et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 124 (2014) 562 567

Information about the customers, their interests and purchasing decisions could be transformed into
knowledge, added to the organizational knowledge base and ground domain decisions. Build-in analytic
capabilities, key performance indicators (KPIs) for objectively evaluating the data are made available to decision
makers.
Executives become aware of the value brought by social data in domains like supply chain management,
product development, reputation management, risk management (Palmer, Mahidhar, Galizia, & Sharma, 2013).
Therefore, social networking was brought within organization, executives, experts, all kind of professionals
becoming active players, creating social data within the company (Kobielus, 2007), (Jain, 2012). Obviously,
social data is not the only data source of the Business Intelligence value chain, but it defines a new perspective
for the decision makers.
2.1 Integrating the social view into a classical BI schema
Managing social data is challenging, an adequate data warehouse schema being necessary (Fig. 2). The
proposal establishes a methodological framework for adapting any classical BI schema to a social approach. In
terms of SBI measures and dimensions reengineering will be fulfilled (Muntean & Cabu, 2011):
x the initial fact table will be transformed into a dimension Old_Fact_Now_Dimension; as a result, the
measures of the classical BI model will become dimensional attributes Am_1, AM_2, , AM_m; based on
this transformation the social perspective of the whole approach can be interpretated as an add-one facility of
the classical schema;
x identified problems together with the recommendations for solving these problems will become dimensional
attributes of two additional dimensions Problems, Actions;
x the individuals identified as actors within the virtual social community will be modeled as a distinguish
dimension - Definitions; the dimension will be modeled based on the individuals role within the social
environment and their function/position within the company;
x the measures of the SBI data model will be established MS_1, MS_2, , MS_n; they will be aggregate with
respect to the introduced new dimensions Old_Fact_Now_Dimension, Problems, Actions and Definitions.

Fig. 2. Data warehouse schema proposal for SBI (Muntean & Cabu, 2012)

Mihaela Muntean et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 124 (2014) 562 567

Minor adjustments of the proposed SBI schema can occur in concrete implementations, e.g. organizing
Actions and Problems into a dimensional hierarchy (Fig. 3) or introducing Time as a supplementary dimension.
2.2 A SAP Community Network based SBI proposal
The SAP Community Network (SCN) is a collaborative virtual community where SAP software users,
developers, consultants, mentors and students share ideas, learn, innovate and stay connected
(http://www.scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-18475). The discussion areas are product, solution or technology oriented;
social networking tools like forum, blogging zone, wiki space facilitate the dissemination of information and
support knowledge sharing. Community members are encouraged to act consequently within the discussion
areas. Gamification strategies have been adopted to motivate individuals to consolidate a knowledge-based
environment. According to their contribution within SCN, users accumulate points and can advance from Glass
to Diamond level.
Social data is gathered from a discussion forum, topics like 'Enterprise Resource Planning', 'ABAP
Development', 'SAP NetWeaver Portal', 'SAP Business One Application', 'SAP ERP Human Capital
Management', 'SAP Landscape Transformation', 'Governance, Risk and Compliance' and 'Security' being
covered. Identified problems (threads) are formulate as posts and added into the corresponding sub-category,
part of one of the above mentioned main categories. A thread can have one of the following statuses
Answered, Assumed answered or Not answered.

Fig. 3. Data warehouse implementation for SBI proposal (Rnciog, 2013)

The general conceptual schema (Fig. 2) has been adapted to the SCN reality, for modeling the social
perspective three dimensions being necessary (Fig. 3). The SBI proposal is stand-alone and was not added to an
existent classical BI solution. Therefore, Old_Facts_Now_Dimension is missing from the implementation.
After deploying the OLAP cube, KPIs will be added to the model (Fig. 1). According to (Kaplan & Norton,
1996), a KPI should be specific, measurable, achievable, result-oriented, and time-bound. KPIs are used to assess
or measure certain aspects of business operations that may otherwise be difficult to assign a quantitative value to.
For implementing the KPIs the steps presented in (Muntean & Cabu, 2011) have been respected. Some KPIs
examples are listed below (Fig. 4). Additionally, status reports (Fig. 5) can be automatically generated.

565

566

Mihaela Muntean et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 124 (2014) 562 567

Fig. 4. KPIs examples (Rnciog, 2013)

Fig. 5. Status report example

Advanced analytics, data mining techniques enbable the generation of all kind of enterprise reportings that
contain relevant information and knowledge for the decision makers (Meerhan & Roberts, 2010), (Bughin, Chui,
& Manyika, 2012), (Millman, 2007).
3. Conclusions
Based on a selective literature review and some of the authors recent contributions the concept of Social
Business Intelligence has been introduced. A theoretical framework for modeling the social view was grounded.
It can be interpreted as an add-on to a classical BI data warehouse schema. The scientific demarche is
consolidated with a practical example based on the social data generated and disseminated within the SCN
community. Obviously, social data alone is not sufficient to ground decisions, but it consolidates the corporate

Mihaela Muntean et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 124 (2014) 562 567

insight. Encouraging social networking, companies can benefit of the value added to their businesses by social
intelligence. The debate is oriented on pointing out the new perspective of SBI for the decision makers. Future
researches will imply some extended implementations of the whole SBI value chain.
References
Brohman, D.K. (2000). The BI Value Chain: Data Driven Decision Support In A Warehouse Environment, Proceedings of The 33rd Hawaii
International Conference on Systems Science
McKnights, W. (2004). The New Business Intelligence Architecture Discussion, Information Management Magazine
Melfert, F., Winter, R., & Klesse, M. (2004). Aligning Process Automation and Business Intelligence to Support Corporate Performance
Management, Proceedings of the 10th America Conference on Information Systems
Mukles, Z. (2009), Business Intelligence: Its Ins and Outs, Technology Evaluation Centers - http://www.technologyevaluation.com/
research/articles/business5intelligence5its5ins5and5outs519503/
Sabherwal, R., & Becera-Fernandez, I. (2011). Business Intelligence. Practices, Technologies and Management , John Williey & Sons, Inc.
Guiterrez, N. (2006). Business Intelligence (BI) Governance. Going beyond project selection and prioritization to materialize the enterprise
strategy, Building Tomorrows Enterprise, Infosys Whitepaper - http://www.infosys.com/industries/consumer-packagedgoods/whitepapers/Documents/bi-governance.pdf
Larson, D., & Matney, D. (2007). The Four Components of BI Governance - http://www.bibestpractices.com/view/4681
Muntean, M., Muntean C., & Cabu, L. (2013). Evaluating Business Intelligence Initiatives with Respect to BI Governance, Proceedings of
the IE2013 International Conference
Kaplan, R., & Norton, D. (1996). Translating Strategy In to Action. The Balanced Scorecard, Haward Business School Press Boston
Blomme, J. (2012). The new normal in Business Intelligence - http://www.slideshare.net/johblom/the-new-normal-in-business-intelligence
Harrysson, M., Metayer, E., & Sarrazin, H. (2012). How social intelligence can guide decisions,
McKinsey Quarterly http://www.mckinsey. com/insights/high_tech_telecoms_internet/how_social_intelligence_can_guide_decisions
Palmer, D., Mahidhar, V., Galizia, T., & Sharma V. (2013). Reengineering Business Intelligence. Amplify Social Signals, Business Trends,
Deloitte University Press
Kobielus, J. (2007). Business Intelligence gets collaborative, Network World - http://www.networkworld.com/columnists/2007
/011507kobielus.html?page=1
Jain, U. (2012). Collaborative BI: Wisdom of the Crowds, Software Magazine. The Software Decision Journal
www.softwaremag.com/content/ContentCT.asp?P=3377
Muntean, M., & Cabu, L. (2011). Business Intelligence Approach in a Business Performance Context, Austrian Computer Society, Band 280
Muntean, M., & Cabu, L. (2012). Social BI, work in progress, FEAA, UVT
http://www.scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-18475
Rnciog, V. (2013). Social Business Intelligence. Master-Thesis, FEAA, UVT
Meerhan, P., & Roberts, J. (2010). Business Intelligence and Decision Impacts, http://www.gartner.com/resources/200700/200706/
executive_summary_business_i_200706.pdf
Bughin, J., Chui, M., & Manyika, J. (2012). Capturing business value with social technologies, McKinsey Quarterly http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/high_tech_telecoms_internet/capturing_business_value_with_social_technologies
Millman, N. (2007). Business Intelligence: Collaborative decision-making - http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Business-IntelligenceCollaborative-decision-making

Acknowledgements
This work was partially supported by the strategic grant POSDRU/CPP107/DMI1.5/S/78421, Project ID 78421 (2010), cofinanced by the European Social Fund-Investing in People, within the Sectorial Operational Programme Human Resources
Development 2007-2013 for Liviu-Gabriel CABU, Ph. D. Candidate.

567