CALL FOR CHAPTERS
07/19/2002

Business Intelligence in the Digital Economy: Opportunities, Limitations and
Risks
Editor: Mahesh S. Raisinghani
Graduate School of Management, University of Dallas
Phone:  (972) 721-5173, Fax: (972) 721-4007, Email:
mraising@gsm.udallas.edu
Publisher: Idea Group Publishing, Hershey, Pennsylvania, USA


Executive Summary:

Business intelligence (BI) is important in helping companies stay ahead of
the competition by providing the means for quicker, more accurate and more
informed decision making. BI is a general term for applications, platforms,
tools and technologies that support the process of exploring business data,
data relationships and trends. BI applications provide companies with the
means to gather and analyze data that facilitates reporting, querying and
decision making. The most agile BI products/services are not confined by
industry classification and can create an infinite number of possible
applications for any business department or a combination of departments.
Business intelligence (BI) provides timely and accurate information to
better understand your business and to make more informed, real-time
business decisions. Full utilization of BI solutions can optimize business
processes and resources, improve proactive decision making and maximize
profits/minimize costs. These solutions can create an infinite number of
possible applications for finance, competition monitoring, accounting,
marketing, product comparison or a combination of a number of business
areas. The most agile BI solutions can be used in any industry and provide
an infinite number of value-increasing possibilities for any organization.
The purpose of this executive’s guide on business intelligence is to
describe what Business Intelligence is; how it is being conducted and
managed; and its major opportunities, limitations, issues and risks. The
objective of the proposed book is to bring together some high quality
expository discussions from experts in this field to identify, define, and
explore BI methodologies, systems, and approaches in order to understand the
opportunities, limitations and risks.

The audience of this book are MBA students, business executives,
consultants, seniors in an undergraduate business degree program, and
students in vocational/technical training institutes.
The scholarly value of this proposed book and its contribution will be to
the literature in information systems/e-business discipline. None of the
current books on the market address this topic from a holistic perspective.
Some are more geared towards knowledge management or artificial
intelligence. Others take a more computer science and engineering
perspective or a statistical analysis perspective. Possible topics that
could be addressed in this book include (but are not limited to):
BI framework/s, architecture, infrastructure, taxonomy, epistemology, and
ontology
Key features, issues, opportunities, limitations and risks when evaluating
BI applications
Management factors that affect strategic BI success
Critical lessons from the first decade of BI
Real-world customer analytics
BI Technologies – Databases optimized for frequent, high volume,
multidimensional queries.
BI Analytic Applications – Pre-built applications with defined metrics,
methodologies and processes for addressing business problems associated with
specific vertical markets or functional areas of a company.
BI Analysis Tools – Applications that are not vertical-market or
business-function specific, but provide essential functions such as data
visualization, reporting and querying.
BI Development Platform – These building blocks allow for the customized
development of analytic applications to meet any business requirements.
Platforms may include a programming language such as Java, Visual Basic or C
and/or pre-built templates or objects. More advanced platforms provide a
user-friendly interface to manipulate these elements without coding.
Data mining
Intelligent agents
Real-time data warehousing and what's next in data warehousing
Best practices for data analysis/OLAP and its variations
Strategic insights and CEO/CIO/CKO perspectives on BI
Metadata and knowledge management for BI
Managing BI as a core IT and business process for corporate success
Current state-of-the-art best practices and future directions/trends in BI
technologies and applications
BI in next generation enterprises and virtual organizations

BI investment payoff in business/e-business environments

Real world applications and cases in BI


Schedule for Publication:
Given the dynamic marketplace where time-to-market is critical and the
ideas/topics/concepts covered in the book need to be fresh and current, I
plan to have this book completed within the next 12 months. All submitted
chapters will be reviewed on a blind review basis. The review process will
take into consideration the complexity of the BI field and hence, the review
process will be on the constructive side and will encourages positive
feedback from reviewers. I request your cooperation on the following
deadlines:

Task                                      Deadline
Book chapter proposals received           August 31, 2002
Confirm book chapter authors and topics   September 7, 2002
Receive full book chapters                January 6, 2003
Review book chapters, and give feedback   February 28, 2003
Receive final book chapters               April 15, 2003
Final book received by publisher          May 31, 2003


To be published by Idea Group Inc., publisher of the Idea Group Publishing,
Information Science Publishing and IRM Press imprints. Inquiries and
Submissions can be forwarded electronically (Microsoft Word Document or Rich
Text Format (RTF) file) to:

Mahesh S. Raisinghani, Ph.D, CECC
Graduate School of Management, University of Dallas
1845 East Northgate Dr, Irving, TX 75062, USA
Telephone:  (972) 721-5173, Fax: (972) 721-4007, Email:
mraising@gsm.udallas.edu