A conceptual model of metadata's role in BI success

Modern organizations rely on Business Intelligence (BI) systems to provide the information needed to support a wide array of decisions, many of which have significant financial and strategic consequences. As such, information quality is critically important but is also highly contextual, meaning that information that is of sufficient quality for one purpose may not be so for others. The implication of this fact is that users must have the ability to assess information for its fitness to specific purposes. The authors submit that metadata provides this capability. Metadata is information that serves to provide insight into the meaning, quality, location, and lineage of information resources (for example, data elements, queries, and reports) provided by BI systems. In this chapter, they describe how organizations can increase the levels of use of their BI systems by providing the right metadata to users. The authors propose a conceptual model that describes how metadata contributes to the level of BI system use by creating positive attitudes toward the information available. They validate the model through consultation with experts in the fields of BI, information quality, and metadata management as well as through a survey of over 250 BI practitioners.