Introduction

Business intelligence (BI) encompasses the procedural and technical infrastructure put in the company to collect, store and analyse the data related to the organisational operations (Rikhardsson and Yigitbasioglu, 2018). The fundamental merit of the BI relies on helping the company make viable decisions by exploring the present and historical data within the business context (Caseiro and Coelho, 2019). The technological tool is desired in the United Kingdom (UK) retailers like Tesco to promote business competitiveness and sustainability. The research proposal will thus explore the need of adopting and apply BI in Tesco Plc to promote business success. The proposal will encompass examining applicable research goals, literature review, methodology, and the potential outcome.

Research Goal

The main aim of the research is to explore the significance of the business intelligence technology application in the daily operation of Tesco Plc, short and long-term benefits.

Objectives

To identify the core areas of operations where BI technology can be incorporated in Tesco Plc.
To determine the impacts of BI technology incorporation in Tesco Plc operations.

To explore the challenges that are likely to hinder the incorporation of the BI technology in Tesco Plc.

Research questions

What are the core areas of the BI technology incorporation in Tesco Plc?
What are the impacts of the BI technology use in Tesco Plc?

What challenges can hinder the incorporation of the BI technology in Tesco Plc’s daily operations?

Literature Review

The literature review will thus major on Tesco Plc, background, mission, vision and strategic plans. Other crucial aspects of the literature review include the BI’s background review, its significance in business operations, and the related limitations. The literature review will also explore Tesco Plc’s strategic plan and how it can be achieved based on the BI implementation as noted.

Tesco Plc is a British multinational grocery and merchandise retailer established in 1919. It has over 4,673 stores globally with a revenue of 57.887 billion and a net income of 6.147 billion as per the 2021 financial report (Tesco Plc, 2022). The company operates physical and online stores to increase the market share and gain competitiveness in the retail industry. The application and implementation of the BI can translate to a significant gain in Tesco Plc. Business intelligence is a modern technology applicable in analysing and spotting market trends while increasing sales and revenues.

Business Intelligence is crucial in tracking the organisational performances, predicting success, analysing the customer behaviour and spotting the marketing trends desired in evaluating the market share. According to Ain et al. (2019), BI application has been predominant among the decision-makers and the companies’ executives because of its ability to offer complex and competitive information input in the decision-making processes. The core challenges of BI implementation includes the choice of the right BI software to apply in the firm, the cost involved, and identification of the key performance indicators (KPI) and complex analysis of the collected information (Lennerholt et al., 2018).

Tesco’s strategic goal is to lower the cost in the industry and sell its products at the lowest prices (Hashim et al., 2021). Lowering the prices of the merchandise is possible through effective decision making that ensures that customers get the right products from the retailers at the right time. BI will help gather the client data and behaviour, thus promoting the supply of the desired products according to the client’s preferences (Assad, 2019).

Research Methodology

Research Philosophy

Saunders developed the research onion highlighting different data collection and analysis perspectives in a research study (Hürlimann, 2019). The outer shell of the onion depicts the research philosophies, including positivism, interpretivism, pragmatism and realism. Pragmatist research philosophy applies in the research because it is based on facts. The choice of the research in pragmatist research is influenced by the research problem, where the practical results are considered more important. The practical application of BI should be visible in Tesco Plc.

Fig 1: Research Onion

Source: (Hürlimann, 2019)

Mixed Methods

Quantitative and qualitative methods will be applied in the data collection and analysis. The qualitative sources describing the merits and demerits of BI use in the retail industry will be used in the study. Additionally, the data quantifying the significance of the BI use will be identified through quantitative sources (Cypress, 2018).

Data Collection

The systematic review design will be applied in the data collection. It involves the review, assessment and evaluation of the existing research studies to address the need of the BI in Tesco Plc operations (Thilakaratne et al., 2019). Data collection is easy in systematic review because of the article available on the online platform. The search strategy for the data involves the use of keywords like business intelligence, strategic plan, and Tesco sustainability. Ten articles will be selected based on the relevancy to the research objectives. Articles less than 5 years will be selected for the study.

Data analysis

Thematic analysis will be applied in the data analysis from the targeted 10 scholarly sources. The core theme answering the research questions will be identified in the selected sources. Quantitative data will be analysed through statistical tools like mean, frequency and mode.

Ethical considerations

The secondary studies will be acknowledged through referencing to avoid plagiarism (Thienthong, 2018). There is no need for a consent form in the research because the data will be collected from secondary sources and not human parties or individuals. Collected data will be processed and stored on password protected devices and cloud backup solutions.

Expected Sources

Secondary studies including books, peer-reviewed articles and research journals will be used in data collection. The ten articles selected for the study are attached in the appendices (see Appendix 2).

Potential Outcome and Limitations

Potential Outcome

It is expected that the benefits of the BI application in the retail industry will outweigh the risks attached to its implementation. The fundamental benefits expected are not limited to identifying the customer behaviours, which will help Tesco Plc device the best customer services provision criteria to fit the customer needs. Promotion of viable decision-making processes is also expected as a benefit of BI in Tesco Plc. Factors undermining the BI use like cost is another expected outcome.

Limitations

The core constraints likely to be encountered in the research include limited time. The time needed for the data collection and analysis is longer and might not fit within the budgeted semester time in the course content. Access to the literature might also pose a challenge because of the restricted access to most scholarly materials. Data analysis will also pose a challenge because thematic analysis requires reviewing all material content before identifying the relevant themes aligning with the research goals.

References

Ain, N., Vaia, G., DeLone, W.H. and Waheed, M., 2019. Two Decades of Research on Business Intelligence System Adoption, Utilization and Success–A Systematic Literature Review. Decision Support Systems, 125, p.113113. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dss.2019.113113

Assad, C.A.R., 2019. Using business intelligence solutions for forecasting in marketing researches. Int J Inf & Commun Technol ISSN, 2252(8776), p.8776. : http://iaescore.com/journals/index.php/IJICT

Caseiro, N. and Coelho, A., 2019. The Influence of Business Intelligence Capacity, Network Learning and Innovativeness on Startups Performance. Journal of Innovation & Knowledge, 4(3), pp.139-145. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jik.2018.03.009

Cypress, B., 2018. Qualitative research methods: A phenomenological focus. Dimensions of Critical Care Nursing, 37(6), pp.302-309.

Hashim, M., Nazam, M., Abrar, M., Hussain, Z., Nazim, M. and Shabbir, R., 2021. Unlocking the sustainable production indicators: a novel tesco based fuzzy AHP approach. Cogent Business & Management, 8(1), p.1870807. https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2020.1870807

Hürlimann, C., 2019. Research Philosophy and Ethics. In Valuation of Renewable Energy Investments (pp. 111-126). Springer Gabler, Wiesbaden.

Lennerholt, C., van Laere, J. and Söderström, E., 2018. Implementation challenges of self service business intelligence: A literature review. In 51st Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Hilton Waikoloa Village, Hawaii, USA, January 3-6, 2018 (Vol. 51, pp. 5055-5063). IEEE Computer Society.

Rikhardsson, P. and Yigitbasioglu, O., 2018. Business Intelligence & Analytics in Management Accounting Research: Status and Future Focus. International Journal of Accounting Information Systems, 29, pp.37-58. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.accinf.2018.03.001

Tesco Plc, 2022. Tesco Plc. [online] Tesco. Available at: < https://www.tescoplc.com > [Accessed 22 February 2022].

Thienthong, A., 2018. Inferential Reasoning as a Means of Avoiding Plagiarism in Paraphrasing. PASAA: Journal of Language Teaching and Learning in Thailand, 56, pp.9-32.

Thilakaratne, M., Falkner, K. and Atapattu, T., 2019. A systematic review on literature-based discovery: General overview, methodology, & statistical analysis. ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), 52(6), pp.1-34.