The purpose of this thesis is to understand the reasons why organizations may or may not be utilizing BI in strategic decision making and to employ the knowledge for developing BI in a way that meets the expectations of the businesses. The research question for this thesis is to identify to what extent Business Intelligence is employed as a decision support tool by organizations when making strategic decisions? 

The thesis follows a qualitative method in the form of a case study, where data has been collected from three different companies. The thesis has used a deductive approach which means literature reviews are employed to gather knowledge about the study area. This has also been used to determine how well existing knowledge aligns with the findings from the study. In the study, semi-structured interviews have been used to address the research question as the primary data collection tool. The interview results suggest that BI is employed to varying extent by various organizations when making strategic decisions. This thesis suggests that companies should be much better at using Business Intelligence as a decision-making tool when it comes to making strategic decisions.

The results of the study show that companies are well on their way to reaching this goal. But that a lot still needs to be done for example managers at companies need to understand the importance of BI and what it can achieve. There are managers that are very financially oriented who don't understand the value of BI and the benefits of it. They only use BI as a support for carrying financial reports and this is something that prevents the development of BI and also the maturity. This is one of the reasons why companies still have a lot to do when it comes to BI combined with strategic decisions.