Exploring Affordances of Business Intelligence & Analytics with Regard to Customer-oriented Work Practices

The proliferation of digital technologies enhances the possibilities for collecting customer data. This has tremendously increased the interest in the use of business intelligence and analytics (BI&A) to generate knowledge about customers’ behaviour, preferences and demands. Firms have recognised the potential of BI&A; however, they are still unsure about the exact action possibilities of BI&A to enhance their customer orientation. Thus, in this paper, we aim to identify the functional affordances of BI&A with regard to the establishment of customer-oriented work practices. We conducted an interpretive single case study of a bank in Switzerland. Our results reveal seven affordances from the firm’s perspective. These findings enable us to explain how BI&A may be used in the case-study organisation and what its potential outcomes are. Moreover, we highlight the contributions of BI&A to a firm’s customer response and customer orientation capabilities.