Effect of business intelligence on competitive advantage: Case of IT sector

The main purpose of this research is to examine the effect of business intelligence on competitive advantage in IT sector. In line with the purpose, it was aimed to investigate and determine effect of business intelligenceon competitive advantage in enterprises operating in IT sector in Ankara. A phenomenology design was followed in this research. Qualitative content analysis was applied to the data gathered by interview method. The population is consisted of IT enterprises operating in Ankara, and the sample is consisted of IT enterprises adopted business intelligence tools. The sample was selected by following criterion sampling method that is a kind of purposive sampling. Interviews were conducted with 14 participants that accepted request for interview. Participants are consisted of founders, executives, managers of big data and business intelligence, project managers, business intelligence experts, business intelligent consultants, data base expert, business development manager, and department of efficiency staff. 10 open-ended questions and two probes for each question were organized as data collection tool. Data were collected by using semi-structured interviews conducted with participants. Qualitative content analysis was applied to the data. As a result; five main themes emerged and entitled as "business intelligence", "technologies adopted in sector", "competition", "enterprise", and "solution recommendations". It was defined that "business intelligence" is an unsettled concept in IT sector. The enterprises are struggling to provide competitive advantage by using different business intelligence tools. Business intelligence has a positive effect on providing competitive advantage. The enterprises that do not use business tools for their high costs, confront with errors derived from data stack. Due to the competition in sector, enterprises that adopt business intelligence are struggling to provide competitive advantage by following developments in the area consistently. Keywords: Business Intelligence, Business Intelligence Technologies, Competition, Competitive Advantage, IT Sector