Abstract:

There is a high demand for real time delivery of quality operational information for reporting and analytics, in banking institutions. That is, business intelligence and data management are proving to be two of the must do activities, for an organization to improve its competitiveness and performance management. However, the business intelligence and Master Data Management (MDM) phenomena are without challenges and issues, as organizations struggle to achieve their projected business targets and goals. In this paper, the argument is that a profound understanding of master data management activity is key to improving BI. To this point, following an interpretive philosophy and a qualitative approach, the case study informing this paper explored and described how MDM activities can enable business intelligence, in a financial bank. In this paper, MDM and BI are seen as an activity system, within a banking environment.  Activity theory is, thus, used as a lens to analyze the activity system. The paper concludes with a conceptualized framework for an improved BI.