Diagnosis of initial data to design a project model enabling the implementation of a business intelligence process for design and construction engineering companies in Cuba

Business Intelligence Process during recent years have provided a growing number of companies all over the world with the ability to control internal and external environments and to create appropriate know-how for decision making processes; to provide a new Strategic Management orientation; to reduce the potential risk margin and to increase competitiveness. Cuba represents a leading sector of Design and Construction Engineering Companies for the implementation of this new Cuban Management and Business Administration System, seeking to diversify services in the national and international construction market. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the use of different tools, such as the expertise calculation index procedure, orientation and information interviews, surveys, category correlation and focus groups, which allowed the diagnosis of initial data situation on the project approach for the implementation of such a process. The most important outcomes were the definition of organization stages to be implemented, by means of a Business Intelligence Project, those elements that limit and facilitate the process. From these elements, an on-going scientific investigation design was created, counting with the cosponsorship from several universities and companies. Concrete results are expected to design a Business Intelligence Process for such companies and a Manual to guide researchers and executive staff involved in the improvement of similar entities of management.


Introduction
Inteligencia empresarial en la industria de la construcción/Business intelligence in construction industry As a methodological stream, the use of Project Management, for the introduction of new soft or hard technologies, has been expanding all over the world.Julio García, José A. Macías Project Management is an absolute requirement to approach the implementation of new technologies and processes for construction sector in Cuba, since the continuous attempts to develop them, in an empirical or traditional way, have only conducted to partial results or to failures of outlined goals.
Several factors determine whether Project Management is required, however in the case of design and implementation of a Business Intelligence Process for the design and engineering of construction companies, such factors are present.Therefore, it was decided that this process fits this Management system, because of the advantages involved for a modern organization to get orientated towards projects (Heredia R., 1999), provided that: • Projects help to spread support and comprehension in all directions.• This new activity will impact the members of all the organization.• The project will be benefited from all specialization diversity, basis and experiences.• It enables the optimization of Quality, Costs and Project deadline.
There are a growing number of organizations in the world that are basing their management system on the knowledge and use of products from business intelligence, thus increasing their competitiveness levels.In Cuba only few organizations have lead this way, however, the ones that have, today show outstanding results that place them among the most advanced in their market specialty in the world.
Cuba, also involved in the present and turbulent global environment, has been affected by events such as the socialism fall down, the globalization process of international economy, the reinforcement of North American blockade together with a growing role of technology and services sectors, which have forced Cuba to develop an economical restructuration policy, where the assimilation of modern management methods and techniques becomes a must.
In November 1997 the "Economical Resolution" was issued (Periódico Granma, 1997) that outlined one of its main lineaments: "Investment policy and its effectiveness are crucial for the efficiency increase".Therefore, it is necessary to meet the international regulations in all respects of conception, projection, construction and implementation of investment scope… Inteligencia empresarial en la industria de la construcción/Business intelligence in construction industry The use of modern business administration techniques appropriate to our characteristics, based on the best and most advanced contemporary practices, as well as a wide use of technology, information and telecommunication services, must be a priority in our country in order to guarantee highest efficiency of productive processes management.Financial, advisory and services, together with technical professional services shall undergo a strong development in our national territory and in other countries.
The Construction sector has been affected by the financial contraction during recent years and faces the challenge of finding solutions to finance the minimum requirements of this sector in a short time period.Solutions must be achieved by means of effectiveness, efficiency and internal savings, so as to compete in the international market (Rodríguez Peña, 1998).Therefore, counting with Business Intelligence systems will allow us to face a strong competition in this sector by using the intelligence products obtained.
Over recent years, Cuban Design and Engineering companies methodologically grouped in the Projects Front have been focused in the process of pushing forward business improvement, 18 out of them associated to the Design and Construction Engineering Business Group (GEDIC) of the Construction Ministry intend to conduct this research.Such entities represent a leading sector for the implementation of this new Cuban Management and Business Administration System, having as a latent need the requirement of achieving higher goals.Besides, this is a sector sensitive to any development strategy in the country, where an investment process is required, so most companies aspire to acquire new management techniques to provide services for the national construction market and to launch an increasing number of services into the international market.Of course above is equivalent to count with Project Models that facilitate the incorporation of a Business Intelligence Process (BI) to their daily routine as soon as possible.
This paper presents the results of a diagnosis conducted by18 entities of Design and Construction Engineering Business Group (GEDIC), with the purpose of sharing the initial data situation of this project approach for the implementation of a Business Intelligence Process in management systems in Cuban design and engineering sector, which will provide them with the ability to capture and analyze data, in an organized and systematic way, Julio García, José A. Macías to control, obtain and broadcast relevant information about external environment and internal conditions thus delivering a global vision of economical, financial, historical, regulatory, political, social and technological aspects that allows the creation of a solid knowledge for decision making processes, where Strategic Management will have the best chances for a correct implementation, making a contribution to the proper compliance of outlined goals by reducing potential risk margin and increasing competitiveness.

Objectives and development of initial data diagnosis 2.1 Diagnosis objectives
In order to conduct the diagnosis the following work objectives were established: In order to solve the first objective, an Experts selection process took place; a group of specialists from all operational areas in the 18 companies was proposed, those corresponding to all possible segments involved with different processes, interests areas, professional or any other variable that qualifies them after the completion of an expertise survey (see Appendix #1).The survey allowed the selection of candidates meeting the previously established requirements to set up an Expert Committee for the Project Direction, Knowledge Management, and Business Intelligence Development.
For the selection of experts participating in this research, a procedure developed by Dr. MSc.María de Lourdes Artola (Delmás Magalys, Del Sol Orianna, 1998) Inteligencia empresarial en la industria de la construcción/Business intelligence in construction industry was employed.It is notable the Expertise Index calculation (EI) that will be used in the processing phase taking into consideration the report (García H. R., Cuétara S. L, 1996) about this subject.
The expert competence questionnaire, see Appendix #1, is an extremely useful instrument in this stage, particularly because it captures information about the experience and know-how of a group of people related to the evaluation objective.This questionnaire layout together with the group of candidate experts, allows the capture of information useful to calculate the Expertise Index.It is divided in two parts.The first part gathers information about the features that identify the expert.In the second part, the candidate is requested to provide an appraisal regarding his labor background supporting his expert condition on the research study subject.
Before calculating the Expertise Index (EI), it was necessary to homogenize the values of different variables in this study.
72 proposed candidates, representative of different areas and work groups from 18 companies, were evaluated by determining their expertise index by means of Survey Nr.1.Experts with an EI <0.4 were disregarded and eventually only 65 candidates were considered.(Miller and Freud, 2004) By using the Guidance interviews, Informative interviews, and different analysis methods Surveys # 2 and 3 were created.See Annexes 2 and 3 that facilitated the approach to the initial data situation in these companies as far as Project Management and Business Intelligence Processes are concerned.

Survey Processing and Application
For the statistical processes in surveys # 2 and 3 professional SPSS 10.0.6 software was employed by conducting a frequency descriptive and statistical analysis on the responses according to the evaluation scale, being in this case from 1 to 9 in order to achieve a higher average.
Responses from survey #2, including evaluations between 7 and 9, demonstrate that these organizations have a strong culture regarding Project Management techniques and tools, based on their own implementation methodology (Group of Authors of the Construction Ministry Cuba, 2006) as well as processes and they have achieved their service certification by the Buro Veritas, the Lloyd Register and the National Standardization Office of Cuba.Julio García, José A. Macías Besides, for better displaying the obtained results, graphic outlet of frequency histograms were employed, as seen in the following pictures.
However the statistical process in survey # 3, proved some other different situations as far as Business Intelligence Process is concerned, as shown by frequency histograms in below pictures.56% of the polled experts confirm to know few or nothing about Business Intelligence, while the remaining 44% claim to have some kind of knowledge about it.
Figure 3. Results Inquiry #3 Inteligencia empresarial en la industria de la construcción/Business intelligence in construction industry 75% of polled experts indicate that the degree of implementation of Business Intelligence Process is low inside the organization.81.4% of polled experts grant higher importance to the implementation of Knowledge Management, while a 12.3% considers it is not important.
Results Inquiry #4, responses in decreasing order is the following.
• Improves the Competitive Intelligence -Innovative Capability relationship in their organization.• Improves the Strategically Orientation in their organization.• Detects competitive advantages.
• Implements tools facilitating and speeding up a better management of Productive Processes.
82% of polled experts agreed on the first aspect, so we decided to deal it in depth.Julio García, José A. Macías 87.5% of polled experts consider themselves as highly motivated to face the culture change inside the organization.
Since 82% of polled experts considered that counting with a Business Intelligence Process will, in first place, lead to an improvement of the relationship Competitive Intelligence-Innovation Capability inside the organization, it was decided to conduct an exploratory analysis on this subject in order to deepen our knowledge on the current condition of Competitive Intelligence of the Design and Engineering companies in the Construction Sector in relation to their innovative capability.
• In effect, do they correctly use Competitive Intelligence to keep more competitive products?
• Does the culture support Competitive Intelligence practices?• Is the management administering the processes correctly?Taking as a reference the method developed by Dr. David Güemes and Dr. Marisela Rodríguez from Quality and Manufacture Technological Center of Monterrey (Güemes and Rodríguez, 2007;Hernández, Fernández, Baptista, 1997), the following correlation was established obtaining results expressed in below graphs.Tabla 1. Correlación Inteligencia competitiva-capacidad de innovación en las empresas de diseño e ingeniería del sector de la construcción Table 1.Correlation competitive intelligence-innovation capability in design and engineering companies in the construction sector Inteligencia empresarial en la industria de la construcción/Business intelligence in construction industry

Analysis Results
• Businessmen's leadership has not influenced a better performance or competitive inside the companies • Companies do not own a to create concepts from a systematic organization supported on the competitive intelligence practices yet.• Although companies are considered as innovative organizations, they are not employing the whole potential from competitive intelligence to create better products.• If companies are focused on the innovation/improvement of productive process, it is very likely they will be competing based on the cost, since products innovation usually takes place before innovation of production process and a motivation to improve the productive process is given by the advantages obtained from an economy of scale.• Competitive intelligence does not directly influence innovation for the organization, including the practices of information uses for decision making processes.• The knowledge management is the link that joints variables of innovative capabilities and competitive intelligence variables in companies, however the quality of knowledge management is still very poor in the organizations.• The organizations are acquainted with available information sources; however, information is not evaluated or delivered.• Companies are in fact using the information systematically, though they have not discovered the need to link information to innovative opportunities.
• Companies do not use information systematically to feed their innovative capability.• There is only a culture of delivering only what it was required = " Analysis is conducted only on requested items and this information is delivered only to whom has demanded it" • Information is delivered only to people requiring it.
The innovation culture still not exceed the paradigm one that possesses/accumulates more information is worthier than the who shares/delivers more information" • In fact, information is being used… but it is not dully employed for innovation (it is not used in function of increasing innovative capability).
Besides, a group activity was conducted by using a combination of techniques from Focus Groups and Force Fields in order to determine the elements that restrict and facilitate the change inside these organizations (Hernández, Fernández, Baptista, 1997) that began by designing a graph of the passage from present condition to the desired condition, which finally resulted as shown in the figure below.

ESTADO DESEADO DESIRED CONDITION
Empresas Cubanas de Diseño e Ingeniería que no disponen de ninguna fuente, ni tienen estructurado dentro de sus sitemas de gestión ningún proceso, que las provea de Productos de Inteligencia Empresarial.Cuban Design and Engineering companies counting with no sources and have not created a management system that provides Business Intelligence Products.

PROYECTO PARA IMPLANTAR PROCESO DE IE IMPLEMENTATION PROJECT OF A BI PROCESS
Empresas Cubanas de Diseño e Ingeniería provistas de productos de inteligencia empresarial que le permiten la toma oportuna de decisiones, mejorar la dirección estratégica y elevar niveles de competitividad.
Cuban Design and Engineering companies counting business intelligence products, allowing them to make correct decisions to improve strategic managements thus increasing competitiveness levels.

Tabla 2. De votación para las fuerzas restringentes
Table 2. Voting for restrictive forces Tabla 3. De votación para las fuerzas impulsoras Table 3. Voting for fostering forces Inteligencia empresarial en la industria de la construcción/Business intelligence in construction industry Once situation is proposed, the experts were required to provide their opinions, restrictive forces (limitations) that restrain the achievement of the desired condition and the fostering forces (potentialities) that would facilitate the achievement of the desired condition.An analysis was in order to determine the forces arrangement.Fostering forces were kept and described as they were initially.Restrictive forces were grouped reaching a number of 10.
According to the methodology of this exercise, one point is given to each restrictive and pulling force, then divided by two and finally added to the total amount.In this case, there are 10 restrictive forces; half is 5, then 10 + 5 = 15 total points for restrictive forces; those total points are distributed among each one of restrictive forces, individually, according to priority order assigned by every member of the group.The same operation was developed for fostering forces, so as to create a priority order among them in accordance with the group criteria.
The following tables show individual vote recorded by each member of the group.

Figure 5 .
Figure 5. Gráfica del cambio Figure 5. Graphic of change procesos cree usted que serán mejorados con la implantación de un Sistema que permita trabajar por Proyectos en su organización?/Whichare the processes you consider will be improved upon the implementation of a project system in your organization?Mejora la orientación Estratégica de su organización/To strategically improve Orientation of the organization Mejora la introducción de la Innovación en su organización/To improve Innovation Introduction in the organization Mejora la introducción de Transferencias Tecnológicos en su organización/To improve the Introduction of Technological Transfer in the organization Establecer herramientas que faciliten y agilicen una mejor gestión de los Procesos Productivos/To create tools facilitating and speeding up a better management of productive processes 5. ¿Está motivado usted para este cambio de cultura organizacional?/Areyoumotivated with this cultural change in the organization?Explique las causas/Please explain your reasons ¡Muchas Gracias por su colaboración!/Thanks for your cooperation!Inteligencia empresarial en la industria de la construcción/Business intelligence in construction industry Appendix #3 -Survey #3The Management Council of GEDIC requests your collaboration in order to determine your knowledge and culture level on Business Intelligence Process (BI) existing in your organizations.For the evaluation of each criterion, please reply according to the following scale: Para transar entre los valores anteriores/To mark the middle of above values 6. ¿Qué nivel de conocimiento tiene usted sobre el Proceso de IE?/What is your knowledge about BI Process? grado de implantación considera usted que hay del Proceso de IE en su organización?/Inyour opinion, what is the extent of implementation nivel de importancia da usted a la implantación del Proceso de IE en su Organización?/What is the importance level you confer to the procesos cree usted que serán mejorados con la implantación de un Sistema que Gestione el Conocimiento?/Which are the processes you consider will be improved upon the implementation of a Knowledge Management System in your organization?Mejora la orientación estrategica de su organización/To strategically improve Orientation of the organization Mejora la relación Inteligencia Competitiva -Innovación en su organización/To improve Competitive Intelligence -Innovation in the organization Detectar las ventajas competitivas/To find out competitive advantages Establecer herramientas que faciliten y agilicen la toma oportuna de decisiones/To create tools facilitating and speeding up appropriate decision making processes 10. ¿Está motivado usted para este cambio de cultura organizacional?/Areyou motivated with this cultural change in the organization?
Explique las causas/Please explain your reasons ¡Muchas Gracias por su colaboración!/Thanks for your cooperation!