Soft Business Intelligence Factors

This chapter discusses the soft BI factors that, to author’s opinion, are important for BI, but have been under-researched and lack generalization: attention, sense, and trust in the context of BI function and its product. The above soft factors are considered important because of their key roles in human information behavior. In the case of BI, production of important insights requires careful handling of all three. There are important under-researched aspects like metrics, management levers or interrelations between the three factors. The unifying common feature for all three factors is their perishability—they are subject to waste, and IT support should be directed to prevent this waste. The author has not performed any empirical research on the above factors, but the materials presented in the chapter may be seen as a response to the need to define possible future research directions.