Business Intelligence Adoption and Implementation Risk in SMEs: Insights From an Empirical Study in Tunisia

Business Intelligence – BI systems are increasingly accessible to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Like all Information Systems (IS), their implementation is very risky by nature. Several scholars underscore that IS risk management is more effective when initiated earlier in the system life cycle, as early as at the adoption. The objective of this research is to describe and understand the process of BI adoption in SMEs focusing on the management of implementation risk of from the adoption stage using an interpretive holistic single-case study of a small manufacturing firm in Tunisia in Africa that successfully adopted a BI system. Consistent with previous research, the study shows that in order to manage the implementation risk during the adoption stage, SMEs can proceed in a way that is more efficient for them that is rather intuitive, informal and unstructured, which is, however, explicitly based on an architecture of principles, policies and practices. The main limitation of the study is related to the qualitative single case study design.