Replacement failure: Getting caught between two commercial off-the-shelf business intelligence systems
No Thumbnail Available
URL
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
School of Business |
Master's thesis
Authors
Date
2023
Department
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Information and Service Management (ISM)
Language
en
Pages
69
Series
Abstract
This master’s thesis focuses on the challenges of replacing a commercial of-the-shelf business intelligence system at a Finnish case company. Business intelligence system implementations are complex and resource-intensive projects, which have high failure rates. Moreover, replacing an established system can also be challenging to an organization and leave it caught between two systems. The study is conducted with an action research approach and provides a rich description on case company’s journey through the replacement project. The data for the study was mainly collected from interviews and researcher observations. The research period of the thesis was 13 months, during which the new system should have been implemented and the use of the incumbent system ceased. At the beginning of the research period, the company set an ambitious goal of replacing the incumbent business intelligence system in three quarters of the year and failed in this task. The company managed to begin the use of the new system and grew its user base during the research period. However, some vital applications remained unimplemented on the new system, leaving the company reliant on the incumbent system and unable to cease its use. At the end of the research period, the company was using both systems simultaneously. The company saw this as a temporary delay and expected to eventually discontinue the use of the incumbent system. The findings suggest that there was not a single event or a challenge that alone caused the delay, but that the project was delayed due to a combination of reasons. The main bottleneck of the project was the availability of the IT consultants used, i.e. inadequate access to resources. Secondly, the company had unrealistic expectations about the implementation process. The difficulty of the technical implementation was severely underestimated. Moreover, the project scope expanded throughout the project period, which naturally took resources from elsewhere and caused changes to the original plans. Combined, these lead to challenges in producing accurate plans and estimations. The study also suggests that the organizational culture might have significantly impacted how exceeding the project deadline was viewed and thus the consecutive project execution.Description
Thesis advisor
Penttinen, EskoKeywords
business intelligence, COTS, information system replacement, information system discontinuance, failure, replacement, discontinuance