A Self-Service Supporting Business Intelligence and Big Data Analytics Architecture

Self-service Business Intelligence (SSBI) is an emerging topic for many companies. Casual users should be enabled to independently build their own analyses and reports. This accelerates and simplifies the decision-making processes. Although recent studies began to discuss parts of a self-service environment, none of these present a comprehensive architecture. Following a design science research approach, this study proposes a new self-service oriented BI architecture in order to address this gap. Starting from an in-depth literature review, an initial model was developed and improved by qualitative data analysis from interviews with 18 BI and IT specialists form companies across different industries. The proposed architecture model demonstrates the interaction between introduced self-service elements with each other and with traditional BI components. For example, we look at the integration of collaboration rooms and a self-learning knowledge database that aims to be a source for a report recommender.