Universal Access in the Information Society

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-023-01073-z

LONG PAPER

Providing micro and small retail enterprises with business intelligence

tools: a case study in Peru
Mario Quinde1 · Juan Quinde1,2

Accepted: 13 November 2023

© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2023

Abstract
Business intelligence has been proven key in providing enterprises with tools to improve their performance. Peruvian micro
and small retailers do not use information and communication technology allowing them to harness the benefits of using
data-driven decision-making approaches in their daily operations and improve their competitiveness. This article reports on
a research project supported by the Peruvian Ministry of Production, which included developing and validating a web-based
business intelligence system for micro and small Peruvian retailers. The research work presents the insights gathered from the
participants regarding the use of business intelligence tools to support their businesses’ daily operations. The validation of
the system was based on the Technology Acceptance Model. The results show the users’ assessments of the system usability
and ease-of-use, presenting their absolute and compared evaluation of the system modules and sub-modules. The experi-
ments include the insights gathering of the presenters (people who led the validation sessions with the users) to include their
perceptions about their interaction with the users. The outcomes analysis highlights the main benefits, challenges, limitations
and future work in the research subject and considers the specific characteristics of the Peruvian micro and small enterprises.

Keywords Universal access · User-centred design · Business intelligence · IT literacy · Usability · Decision support systems

1 Introduction The digital gap refers to the different levels of access to

The development of Information and Communication
Technologies (ICT) has changed people’s lives. This can be
evidenced in broadly accepted ICT-related concepts (e.g.,
digital transformation, artificial intelligence) that have
allowed the creation of tools directly affecting people’s
homes (smarthomes), jobs (business intelligence systems),
transportation (navigation systems), health (mhealth appli-
cations), and other aspects of their daily activities. ICTs are
meant to improve people’s quality of life by providing them
with enhanced services based on information allowing them
to make better decisions.
* Mario Quinde
mario.quinde@udep.edu.pe
Juan Quinde
juan.quinde@udep.edu.pe
1 mality, limited access to IT, digital literacy level and other
Departamento de Ingeniería Industrial y de Sistemas,
Universidad de Piura, Piura, Peru
2
KPI Centro Tecnológico Empresarial, Piura, Peru
ICT that people have [1], which negatively affects those with
less access as they do not enjoy the benefits of these tools.
Achieving universal access to ICT is related to reducing this
digital gap, and it has achieved important goals in the last
decades that are related to providing ICT access to people
with physical disabilities. However, there are still other
important factors inhibiting people from accessing technol-
ogy. For instance, one of these factors is the lack of digital or
IT literacy not allowing people to use digital services in their
daily activities and take advantage of their benefits [1, 24].
There is a gap regarding the access that organisations
and enterprises have to business intelligence and analytic
tools. Large corporations have used these tools to support
the core of their strategic decision-making for over three
decades. Nevertheless, micro, small and medium enterprises
have struggled in the adoption of business intelligence tools
(BI tools) to support their daily operations [20]. This gap is
even larger when it comes to study micro, small and medium
enterprises in developing countries, whose rates of infor-
factors limit adoption of BI tools [7].

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This research work aims at providing insights regarding
the existing gap in micro and small enterprises (MSE) in the
Peruvian retail sector by studying their perception of using
BI tools in their business operations. For this, a fully func-
tional web-based application allowing retail businesses to
support their daily operations was developed and validated.
The system, which is called Bit24, includes a core module
aiding tactical and strategic decision-making by providing
BI reports based on the data gathered from the businesses
daily operations that are also supported by the system.
This article reports on the research project that was spon-
sored by the National Program for Technological Develop-
ment and Innovation (PROINNOVATE) of the Ministry of
Production of Peru. It reports and discusses the results of
Bit24 usability evaluation, which included 15 employees
from 13 Peruvian retail MSEs. The usability evaluation
was based on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM)
and asked the participants to assess Bit24 modules, consid-
ering its usefulness and ease-of-use. The research project
also includes the gathering and analysis of the insights from
the people that presented and led the usability evaluation
of Bit24. This analysis aims at exploring how both types
of actors perceived the system, and the presenters’ insights
regarding their interaction with Bit24 users. All participants
were asked to answer a questionnaire regarding their digital
background, which is presented and analysed. Moreover, the
research work reports the project initial exploration phase
that included 143 employees from 142 Peruvian MSE retail-
ers, previous to the development of Bit24.
Bit24 is made of the Sales, Products, Purchases, Stock
and Reports modules, which are also divided into sub-mod-
ules. After a full demonstration of the modules, the par-
ticipants were asked to assess them regarding their usability
and ease-of-use, using a five-level Likert scale. Furthermore,
they were asked to compare the modules and its sub-mod-
ules by ordering them from the most useful to the least use-
ful and from the easiest to least easy to use. The results of
this evaluation allow to know which are the modules the
participants consider the most/least useful and the easiest/
least easy to use. Hence, it is possible to analyse their per-
ceptions regarding the Reports module, which provides the
BI reports supporting decision-making, and its comparison
with the other modules. The presenters’ insights permit to
know how easy it was for them to explain the Bit24 modules,
and how successful they perceived they were at explaining
the modules.
The research work studies the usability evaluation that
was done to validate a business intelligence system with
real users belonging to Peruvian retail MSEs. The evalu-
ation aimed at gathering their insights regarding the mod-
ules of the business intelligence system that was developed
to present standard indicators about historical data. The
importance of this contribution lies in the fact that Peru is
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Universal Access in the Information Society
a developing country with a critical gap affecting its enter-
prises, which have limited access to ICTs [16] due to several
factors like education, acquisition power, digital literacy, and
others that are common to other developing countries. The
outcomes and analysis reported in this article provide the
scientific community with insights about Peruvian retail
MSEs using business intelligence tools to support their daily
operations and decision-making.
The main contribution of this work is the insights it pro-
vides to design BI tools for the SMEs target group, whose
specific needs and context have been poorly considered in
the design and development of BI systems. These insights
are obtained using the Technology Acceptance Model
(TAM) as the tool allowing to capture the perceived use-
fulness and perceived ease-of-use of a system implement-
ing reports that are traditional to commercial BI systems.
Besides the scarce research on BI systems adoption [3], to
the best of our knowledge, studies focussed on the use of BI
tools in SMEs in developing countries are also scarce.
The research work’s contribution is relevant because of
the existing gap in the use of BI tools between large enter-
prises and SMEs, which makes them exploit information
at different levels in favour of the competitiveness of the
larger ones. Its relevance and appropriateness are supported
by the importance of the knowledge of end-user groups to
achieve universal access and adoption of technology [17].
The research work’s outcomes can be used to design BI tools
focussed on improving BI systems adoption in SMEs to have
a broader and more positive impact on their performance [6].
The article is structured as follows to achieve its objec-
tives. Section 2 presents the background regarding the
importance of decision support systems in MSE, with a
special focus on the impact of using business intelligence
tools and the main factors influencing their implementation.
Section 3 explains the methodology followed that included
three stages, which are the initial exploration, Bit24 usabil-
ity evaluation and the presenters’ experience evaluation.
Section 4 describes Bit24, presents the results of both the
usability evaluation and the presenters’ experience evalua-
tion. Finally, the discussion of these results as well as the
conclusions are presented in Sects. 5 and 6, respectively.
2 Background
The term business intelligence (BI) was firstly introduced
in 1958 by Luhn [15]. Popovic et al. [18] provide a more
recent definition of BI, in which it is defined as “quality
information in well-designed data stores, coupled with soft-
ware tools that provide users timely access, effective analysis
and intuitive presentation of the right information, enabling
them to take the right actions or make the right decision”.
BI tools are those enabling business users to access different
Universal Access in the Information Society
types of data, allowing them to analyse this information to
gain insights into how the business is performing [10].
BI tools aid in managing organisations efficiently by pro-
viding analytic data and key performance information that
allow them to face challenges related to knowledge man-
agement and discovery [20]. Puklavec et al. [19] present
existing studies suggesting that BI improves organisations’
tasks associated with strategic planning, business processes,
performance enhancement, and building competitive advan-
tages. It also highlights time savings and better informa-
tion supporting decision-making as the main direct benefits
of using BI tools. Raj et al. [20] suggest other benefits of
using BI tools pointing out that it can reduce the cost spent
on resources and time to extract intelligence from available
data, allowing to materialise the organisation management’s
vision by providing them with the ability to make more
informed business decisions.
The growing importance of BI in organisations is also
evidenced by the relevant increased of scientific studies on
the adoption, utilisation and success of BI systems [2]. How-
ever, there is a gap in the literature about studies on choosing
the right BI tool for an organisation [23] and, more specifi-
cally, on adopting BI tools for SMEs [14]. Becerra et al. [4]
support this statement by highlighting that SMEs’ lack of
knowledge and strategic capacity to generate technological
innovations do not allow the implementation of BI technolo-
gies. It also explains this gap as an opportunity that has not
been taken advantage of.
The use of BI tools in SMEs can generate a positive
impact. According to Leite et al. [13], the main purpose
of BI in a business is to help in making better and more
informed business decisions. Puklavec et al. [19] stress on
this statement for SMEs by referring to BI systems as valu-
able tools in competitive and uncertain environments. Huang
et al. [9] also present a study confirming a direct impact
of BI on start-ups innovation and network learning and an
indirect impact on their financial performance with a mediat-
ing role. Nevertheless, there is a general opinion that SMEs
are considerably behind in the adoption of BI tools to sup-
port their decision-making [20]. This is a significant gap
because small enterprises represent the majority of enter-
prises worldwide. In 2018, most of the enterprises in the
European Union were small, with shares of 97% or above in
the EU countries, and they accounted for between 40% and
60% of total employment [5].
The TAM is an important tool that can aid in studying the
adoption of BI tools in SMEs and gaining insights on how
to improve it. It has been used as the basis of an extended
model to assess BI systems adoption that includes the pro-
ject maturity perspective [3]. The TAM has also been used
to create an expanded model to evaluate administrative
activities in public hospitals, using the case study of a BI
software [11]. Harb et al. [8] integrate the TAM with the
Personality Trait Model to study the intention to use BI tools
to support business decision-making. Despite these research
efforts, evidence suggests that the TAM has not yet been
used to study the adoption of BI tools in SMEs. This gap is
important as the TAM considers the perceived usefulness
and ease-of-use to understand end-users’ contexts better [11]
and improve the product-user interaction as a success factor
of BI user acceptance [6].
This article studies the validation of a BI system in Peru-
vian Micro and Small Enterprises (MSEs), following a user-
centred perspective and having the TAM as the main techni-
cal reference for the experiments. Considering that MSEs
represent 99% of Peruvian firms, employ 50% of the coun-
try’s labour force, and contribute up to 42% of its GDP [21],
the potential impact of using BI tools in Peruvian MSEs
is significant. It is important to implement user-centred
approaches in the impact exploration of implementing BI
tools [2]. Thus, the users’ digital background is considered
in the experiments. The TAM, as one of the most domi-
nants frameworks in BI systems research and highlighted
for having into account users’ perception, aims at exploring
the individual user acceptance, which is one of the greatest
challenges in the implementation of BI systems [2].
This research project considers the following factors that
influence the implementation of BI tools in SMEs, besides
those that were highlighted above: ease-of-use [4], user-
friendliness [20], technical expertise [20] and usability [14].
The literature also suggests other relevant factors influenc-
ing the implementation of BI tools in SMEs that are not
included in the scope of this research project (investment [4,
20], information culture and training [2]). Specifically to
Peru, Gonzales et al. [7] stress on usability, training and user
satisfaction as key factors influencing the implementation of
BI tools in Peruvian SMEs. These factors are considered in
the research project through its user-centred approach and
the utilisation of the TAM. This is done taking into account
the differences between SMEs from developed and develop-
ing countries [20].
There is an existing gap in the use and adoption of BI
tools between large enterprises and SMEs, which makes
them exploit information at different levels in favour of the
larger ones. Research on BI systems adoption is scarce [3],
especially on the existing gap about the customisation of BI
systems to adapt them to the context of specific enterprises
and sectors, considering their end-user needs regarding con-
tent to improve their adoption process [6].
This research work is related to gaining insights towards
achieving design for all principles that could aid in improv-
ing the usability of BI systems for SMEs in developing coun-
tries and, thus, impact on having a better adoption process
of these systems. The article is associated with having a
better understanding that facilitates the requirements elici-
tation for BI applications in SMEs in developing countries.
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 Universal Access in the Information Society

This contribution addresses universal access topics strongly
related to the Universal Access in the Information Society
journal themes, including design for all principles, usabil-
ity and user experience evaluation, technology assessment
on universal access, and user requirements elicitation and
analysis for diverse target user groups.
3 Methodology
This section describes the methodology that was followed
in the research project. The interaction with the users is
the most important factor allowing to gather their insights
regarding the use of BI tools for their businesses.
The system Bit24 is focussed on providing BI tools to
MSEs, so they can make better decisions to improve their
performance. This project gathers these users’ perceptions
about using BI tools in their enterprises and explores some
participants’ classification attributes leading to under-
standing their digital background. Thus, the experiments
of this research project aim at studying how MSE employ-
ees perceive each module of Bit24. The methodology of
the research project was thought to facilitate the analysis
reported throughout the article. For this, the project was
classified into three research stages.
3.1 Stage 1: Initial exploration
The first is the exploratory stage in which 143 employees
from 142 retail MSEs participated by answering a question-
naire that aimed at gathering their insights regarding the
information systems they used at work to support their busi-
ness operations. The questionnaire also aided in noticing
the gap related to the participants’ perceived importance
of using tools supporting data-driven decision-making
(DDDM) and their real use of tools supporting DDDM. The
real use of tools supporting DDDM refers to what extent
they consider they use or have used information systems
implementing tools aiding them in supporting decision-
making with data in the enterprises they have worked. This
experiment was exploratory and previous to the development
of Bit24. The initial exploration experiment influenced the
development of Bit24 to include the reporting component
in which the BI tools were implemented to support users’
decision-making. The results of the initial exploration exper-
iment, which are presented in Tables 1, 2, 3, confirmed the
need for using these tools.
The participants were asked for their age range and
whether the enterprises they were working at the time used
billing information systems or not. Table 1 shows the sum-
mary of their answers to these questions. It is also impor-
tant to highlight that 93% of the participants (133) classified
themselves as managers, chiefs, CEOs or owners of their
businesses, whilst 7% of them (10) classified themselves as
the main person in charge of the Sales area.
The participants were also asked to choose the two most
desired characteristics in an information system to support
their operations. Their answers, which are summarised in
Table 2, show that more than 90% of the participants con-
sider DDDM support as one of the important characteris-
tics an information system supporting their operations must
have. One participant did not answer this question. These
answers can be compared to the information presented in
Table 3, which summarises the answer to the following ques-
tions: To what extent do you consider you use tools sup-
porting DDDM in your enterprise operations? and To what
extent do you consider it is important to use tools support-
ing DDDM in your enterprise operations? This compari-
son showcases an important gap as most participants think
it is highly important to use tools supporting their DDDM
(131–91.6%), whilst most participants (97–67.8%) also
state they use tools supporting DDDM less than to what
they think these tools are important. The latest ones are the
numbers highlighted in bold style in Table 3.
The development of Bit24 took place between stage 1
and stage 2. Although the results of this first experiment
Table 2  Desired characteristics of an IS supporting enterprises opera-
tions
Characteristic # %
Data-driven decision-making support 128 90.14
Easy to use 93 65.49
After-sales support 52 36.62
Multi-branches operations support 11 7.75

Table 3  DDDM: Real Use v. Perceived Importance

Table 1  Participants by age using billing information systems at their
enterprises Importance of using DDDM

Age Using billing IS Not using billing IS Total Use of DDDM Low Medium High Subtotal

< 25 3 12 15 Low 0 4 29 33
25–40 20 40 60 Medium 0 6 64 70
41–55 22 32 54 High 0 2 38 40
> 55 8 6 14 Subtotal 0 12 131 143

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Universal Access in the Information Society
were used as input to the development process of the system,
other techniques were also used to aid in the development
of Bit24. This research work does not focus on providing
details regarding the development process that led to Bit24
current version. However, it is important to highlight at this
point that Bit24 is divided into five modules, namely Sales,
Purchases, Inventory management, Products management
and Reports modules. These modules and their sub-modules
are properly presented in Sect. 4.1.
3.2 Stage 2: Usability evaluation
The second stage is the experiment in which Bit24 was pre-
sented to a second group of participants who evaluated its
usability through a set of questionnaires they answered after
a demonstration of Bit24. This stage is the one in which the
latest version of Bit24, which included its fully functional
five modules, was presented to 15 users, employees of 13
Peruvian retail MSEs. These participants were then asked
to assess the system usability through a set of questionnaires
that were built based on the Technology Acceptance Model
(TAM). Hence, it was possible to know how the participants
perceived the features of Bit24 regarding its usefulness and
ease-of-use.
It can be said that this stage is the most important one as
the participants received a full demonstration of the system
modules, which included the explanation of the BI tools
(Reports module) they could use to support their decision-
making in their business operations. More details about
this experiment and its results are presented separately in
Sect. 4.2 and then discussed in Sect. 5.
3.3 Stage 3: Presenters’ experience evaluation
The third stage is focussed on those who presented and
explained Bit24 to the participants in stage 2. They will be
referred to as the presenters from now on. The aim of the
third stage was to gather the presenters’ insights, regarding
that the interaction they had with the users through another
questionnaire. After the presenters made the demonstrations
and aided the participants to complete their usability evalua-
tion in stage 2, they were asked to answer a questionnaire in
which they had to assess how successful they perceived they
were at explaining each system module and how difficult it
was for them to explain each system module to each user.
By comparing these results with the information obtained in
stage 2, it is possible to highlight the presenters’ and users’
perspectives, as well as the gap between their perceptions.
The presenters were also asked to provide a report regard-
ing the validation process in which they had to explain the
system errors during the presentation, the main difficulties
they had, and the suggested improvements for the system.
More details of this experiment are given in Sect. 4.3.
4 Business intelligence tools for Peruvian
micro and small retail enterprises
This section presents Bit24, the experiments that were
done to assess the usability of the system and the results.
Section 4.1 describes the features of Bit24 through the
explanation of its five modules. Sections 4.2 and 4.3 pro-
vide details of the usability evaluation experiments (stage
2) and the presenters experiences assessment (stage 3),
respectively.
4.1 Bit24: Business intelligence tools for micro
and small retail enterprises
Bit24 is an information system supporting daily operations
of retail MSE and focussing on the delivery of BI tools
based on the data gathered from these operations. The sys-
tem has been designed to facilitate the delivery of reports
that support decision-making in MSE, but without sacrific-
ing the good performance of their daily operations. The
system aims at tackling two gaps of the Peruvian MSEs,
which are their still limited digital transformation level
and their lack of data-driven decision-making [16]. Thus,
Bit24 does not only offer digital support to simple tasks
(e.g., electronic billing, inventory control), it also pro-
vides other more specialised features (e.g., product fam-
ily grouping management, customer and suppliers man-
agement) allowing the development of reports supporting
short, medium and long-term decision-making.
Table 4 presents Bit24 modules and sub-modules along
with a brief description of the latest ones. The organisa-
tion shown in this table is used throughout the article in
the presentation of the experiments results and discussion.
Modules 1–4 provide support to the daily operations of
the MSE implementing Bit24. Module 5 offers the reports
supporting DDDM.
4.2 Bit24 usability evaluation
The usability evaluation was based on the TAM, which
allowed to assess the usefulness and ease-of-use of the
system modules. For this, the participants attended to a
demonstration in which the features of the system were
described through an explanation of its modules and sub-
modules. After the demonstration, a set of questionnaires
were applied to the participants for assessing the useful-
ness and ease-of-use of each module/sub-module. The
whole process lasted between 7.5 and 9 h and was divided
into three sessions in three different days. Each session
covered the complete explanation and assessment of one or
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 Universal Access in the Information Society

Table 4  Bit24 modules and sub-modules description

Module Sub-module Description

1. Sales Point of sale Supports the products selection process to generate the shopping cart of the sale. Includes features allow-
ing price bargain, product stock checking and ticket generation
Cashier Once the seller generates the ticket, the Cashier module supports the payment of the ticket and the gen-
eration of the sales-process-related documents
Clients Supports client management
Documents Supports the management of sales-process-related documents, which includes options to check, print,
send through email and nullifying documents
2. Products Products Allows adding, updating and disabling products, considering the following specifications: SKU, descrip-
tion, brand, presentations, price, cost and margin. It also allows managing the product prices depending
on the purchasing volumes
Categories and brands Supports product organisation considering up to four levels of product families and categories. The
organisation also considers product brands. This sub-module strongly relates with the generation of the
BI reports
3. Purchases Products reception Supports the registration of the products that are sent from the suppliers. This sub-module also allows to
modify the product prices directly
Suppliers Allows the suppliers management: add new suppliers, update suppliers information, disable suppliers
4. Stock Stock adjustment This sub-module is used when the real stock of a product is different than the one shown in the system
Products transfer This sub-module is used when the company has more than one warehouse. It supports products transfer
between two warehouse
5. Reports Dashboard Shows the key performance indicators (KPIs) that are related to the sales and logistics operations of a
specific day. The report presents the following information: sales per hour, KPIs per categories and
brands, top products contributing to the day’s sales, top products contributing to the margin of the day.
It also includes alerts about likely stock breaking and overstocking
InfoStore Presents information about the sales, margins and stock level per store and product categories. The report
can be customised to summarise this information for a specific time frame (in days), store, and product
categories. It also includes alerts about likely stock breaking and overstocking
InfoClients Provides information about the top clients regarding sales, products quantity and contribution to the
margin. The report can be customised for a specific time frame (in days), and allows choosing a client to
show more information about their activity (e.g., number of sales/tickets, top purchasing products, sales
related to the client)
InfoSuppliers Presents information about the activity related to the suppliers. For a specific time frame (in days) chosen
by the user, the report summarises the receptions per supplier, and allows to choose a specific supplier
for showing the sales, top products and number of receptions related to them
DirectFile Allows to download a file (MS Excel) including information about the sales, quantity, current stock, mar-
gin for each product. The file also includes information about the products brand and categories. The
report can be customised by the user to include information for a specific time frame (in days)
Purchases & Sales This report can be downloaded as a file (MS Excel) and supports monthly taxes declaration that must be
done by the MSE
Kardex Shows products entries, departures and adjustments for a specific time frame (in days)
InfoSellers Provides information about the sellers, including amount of sales, number of sales and products sold by
them
Logistic control panel Presents KPIs (amount of sales, margin, turnover, ROI, stock, amongst others) per product, brand, cat-
egory, store and for a specific period of time (in days)
Annual report Presents KPIs (amount of sales, margin, stock) for the running year. It shows the amount of sales per
month, top seller brands, top seller products and the products with more margin

two modules, depending on the participants’ availability.
At the end of the demonstration, the participants were also
asked to assess the whole system and compare the useful-
ness and ease-of-use of each module and sub-module.
The questionnaires for the Bit24 usability evaluation
used a five-level Likert scale. The assessment of the sys-
tem, its modules and sub-modules absolute usefulness
required the participants to rate them using the following
scale: very useful—useful—neutral—useless—very useless.
The assessment of the system, its modules and sub-modules
absolute ease-of-use was done using the following scale:
very easy to use—easy to use—neutral—difficult to use—
very difficult to use.
The usability evaluation also included a comparison of
the system modules and sub-modules. The participants
were asked to order the modules from the most useful to

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Universal Access in the Information Society
the least useful and from the easiest to use to the least
easy to use. The sub-modules were compared following
the same logic, but grouping their comparison by the
modules to which they belong. For example, for the three
sub-modules (Categories management, Brands manage-
ment, Products management) that belong to the Products
management module, the participants were asked to order
them from the most useful to the least useful and from the
easiest to use to the least easy to use. The same was done
for the sub-modules of the Sales, Inventory and Purchase
modules. The Reports module was compared differently
because of its larger number of sub-modules (10). For the
Reports module, the participants were asked to choose the
three most useful, the three least useful, the three easiest to
use and the three least easy to use sub-modules.
The usability evaluation provided insights regarding
the users’ perceptions of the system. The usefulness and
ease-of-use absolute assessment allows for identifying the
users’ overall perception of the modules and sub-modules.
However, because of the high chances of the modules and
sub-modules being tied using the five-level Likert scale in
the absolute assessment, the experiment also considered
a comparison evaluation allowing the identification of the
modules and sub-modules the users found more and less
useful and easy to use.
The absolute assessment was done using a question-
naire implementing close questions allowing participants
to assess usefulness and ease-of-use with a five-level Lik-
ert scale for each module and sub-module. For the relative
assessment (comparison), the close questions guided the
participants to order the modules and sub-modules regard-
ing their usefulness and ease-of-use.
The cross-module usefulness and ease-of-use compar-
ison aim to position the module implementing Reports
module related to the others. The sub-modules comparison
of each module also allows positioning each sub-module
usefulness and ease-of-use, relating them to the other sub-
modules of their modules. The assessment of the Reports
sub-modules provides the users’ insights regarding which
reports are more and less useful and easy to use. The
Reports sub-module comparative assessment reflects the
users’ insights regarding the reports and how they posi-
tion the BI reports amongst them and compare them to
the non-BI ones.
Fig. 1  Participants’ perceived difficulty to use Smartphones, PC, Social Media, Tablets
4.2.1 Participants
The 15 participants who assessed Bit24 usability were from
13 Peruvian retail MSEs. Before the usability evaluation, the
participants answered a questionnaire to know more about
their digital background. Their answers are summarised as
follows.
At the moment of the evaluation, 6 participants were not
using information systems to support their MSEs opera-
tions, and 2 had never used information systems to support
operations at any enterprise they had worked. From those
with previous experience in using information systems at
any enterprise (13), 6 considered their previous experience
using this type of information systems as very good, 6 as
good, and 1 as neither good nor bad. They evaluated their
previous experience using a five-level Likert scale.
All participants owned a smartphone with mobile data
plans, one of them did not have a PC at home and another
one did not have Wi-Fi at home. Regarding their use of
social media, all participants used it for work purposes, 10
used it for leisure, 6 to keep themselves informed 3 for edu-
cational purposes, 1 for shopping and 1 for working out.
The participants were asked to assess how difficult was it
for them to use smartphones, PC, social media and tablets,
using a five-level Likert scale (very easy—easy—neutral—
difficult—very difficult). Their answers are summarised in
Fig. 1.
The participants were also asked about how difficult it
was for them to use new technologies, and to what extend
they included new technologies in their daily activities.
Again, they used a Likert scale of 5 to answer these ques-
tions. Five participants considered it was very easy for them
to use new technologies, 6 considered it easy, and 4 consid-
ered it neutral. Five participants considered they included
new technologies in their daily activities very frequently,
7 answered this question as frequently, and 3 answered as
neutral.
Finally, the participants were asked to state their moti-
vation to use information systems to support their enter-
prises operations. This open question aimed at knowing,
before being exposed to Bit24, their motivation to use
information systems. The analysis of these answers was
done with the support of the software tool NVivo, which
was the tool supporting the other elements of the project
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Fig. 2  Bit24 modules absolute perceived usefulness

Fig. 3  Bit24 modules compared usefulness

Fig. 4  Bit24 modules absolute perceived ease-of-use

Fig. 5  Bit24 modules compared perceived ease-of-use

needing a qualitative analysis. The results of the analy-
sis to this question show that 10 participants prefer to
use information systems to support their operations con-
trol and management, 8 highlight the use of information
systems to support their DDDM, 6 would use informa-
tion systems to improve their operations efficiency, 2
to improve their planning activities, 1 to diversify their
operations, and 1 to stop using notebooks to keep track
of their operations.
4.2.2 Bit24 modules usability evaluation
Figure 2 shows the absolute perceived usefulness of the
system (Bit24) and each of its modules. Figure 3 presents
the comparison of Bit24 modules according to its useful-
ness. Although the results will be discussed in depth in
Sect. 5, it is important to highlight that the Reports module
is considered the second most useful.

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Universal Access in the Information Society
Figure 4 shows the absolute perceived ease-of-use of the
system (Bit24) and each of its modules. Figure 5 presents
the comparison of Bit24 modules according to its ease-of-
use. From these figures, the Reports module is highlighted
as the second worst assessed regarding ease-of-use, despite
the fact that the navigation in the module only consists in
clicking the reports the user needs to see and filtering them
mainly by dates.
Figure 6 shows the absolute perceived usefulness of Bit24
sub-modules. Figure 7 presents the comparison of Bit24 sub-
modules according to their usefulness. The sub-modules are
compared amongst those belonging to the same module,
which means that a module with only two sub-modules (e.g.,
Fig. 6  Bit24 sub-modules absolute perceived usefulness
Fig. 7  Bit24 sub-modules compared usefulness
Stock, Purchases) will have its two sub-modules assessed
with the values of 1 (for the most useful) or 2 (for the least
useful).
4.2.3 Bit24 sub‑modules usability evaluation
Figure 8 shows the absolute perceived ease-of-use of Bit24
sub-modules. Figure 9 presents the comparison of Bit24
sub-modules according to its ease-of-use. The sub-modules
are compared amongst those belonging to the same module,
which means that a module with only two sub-modules (e.g.,
Stock, Purchases) will have its two sub-modules assessed
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 Universal Access in the Information Society

Fig. 8  Bit24 sub-modules absolute perceived ease-of-use

Fig. 9  Bit24 sub-modules compared ease-of-use

Fig. 10  Bit24 reports chosen as the three most/least useful and the three most/lest understandable

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Universal Access in the Information Society
with the values of 1 (for the easiest to use) or 2 (for the least
easy to use).
The results of the reports comparison are shown in the
heatmap presented in Fig. 10. The numbers of the heatmap
represent the number of times that each report was chosen
as one of the three most/least useful and one of the three
most/least understandable. For instance, the infoStore report
was chosen 9 times as one of the three most useful reports,
3 times as one of the three least useful reports, 11 times as
one of the most understandable reports and 1 time as one of
the least understandable report.
4.3 Presenters’ experience
This section reports on the research project third stage,
which refers to assessing the presenters’ experience regard-
ing both the demonstrations they did and the usability evalu-
ation they led for the participants in stage 2. The presenters
were professionals with a major in Industrial and Systems
Engineering and experience in requirements elicitation.
They were trained for three weeks in the Bit24 operational
modules and one week in the Business Intelligence one.
Their training also included communication and meetings
management skills. The presenters team was in charge of a
team leader with a masters in business administration and
more than eight years in logistics and operation management
in the retail sector. The team leader also led the development
process of Bit24, validated the research tools used for the
experiments, and supervised the presentations.
The presenters had to assess how successful they per-
ceived they were at explaining the system modules and
how easy it was for them to explain the system modules.
Fig. 11  Presenters’ experience: Bit24 modules perceived explanation
Fig. 12  Presenters’ experience: Bit24 modules compared from the best (1) to the worst explained (5)
For this, the presenters answered a question in which
they were asked to use the Likert scale to assess to which
extent they explained Bit24 and its modules properly (very
well—well—neutral—badly—very badly). Another ques-
tion asked to use the Likert scale to assess the level of
difficulty they had at explaining Bit24 and its modules
(very easy—easy—neutral—difficult—very difficult). The
questionnaire also asked to compare Bit24 modules by
ordering them from the one they consider they explained
better (1) to the one they consider they explained worse
(5). Finally, the presenters also had to order Bit24 modules
from the one they consider was the easiest to explain to the
one they consider was the most difficult to explain. This
comparison allows to differentiate between the modules
that are assessed with the same absolute value in the first
two questions.
The presenters assessment was done for each of the
participants from the usability evaluation (Sect. 4.2) they
interacted with, considering that the presenters’ experi-
ences differs depending on the participants they interacted
with. Hence, if a presenter led Bit24 demonstration and
usability evaluation for 4 different participants, then the
presenter had to assess their interaction with each of these
4 participants by answering the questionnaire four times.
The results of the presenters’ experience assessment are
shown in Figs. 11, 12, 13, 14. These results are discussed
in Sect. 5.
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Fig. 13  Presenters’ experience: Bit24 modules perceived difficulty to explain
Fig. 14  Presenters’ experience: Bit24 modules compared from the easiest (1) to the most difficult to explain (5)
5 Discussion
5.1 Usability evaluation
Figures 2 and 3 present the Reports module, which pro-
vides the users with BI reports, as the second most use-
ful for the participants. The Sales module is the only one
assessed as more useful than the Reports one, which is
ranked as more useful than the Stock, Products and Pur-
chases modules, respectively. The Sales module was
expected to be the most important one as it supports the
business’ core operations and feeds the Reports module
with data. Both figures are coherent in assessing the mod-
ules considering their perceived usefulness.
Regarding the perceived ease-of-use of the system and
its modules, Figs. 4 and 5 complement each other. The
Sales module is ranked as the easiest or second most easy
to use by 70% of the participants (Fig. 5), which makes it
the best ranked module regarding ease-of-use. The Reports
module is the worst assessed in this criterion by being
chosen as the most or second most difficult to use by 50%
of the participants. This information is coherent with the
fact that the presenters perceived the Reports module as
the one they explained worst (Figs. 11 and 12) and as the
most difficult to explain (Figs. 13 and 14). The validation
reports written by the presenters highlight the fact that it
was difficult for them to explain and that they perceived
it was difficult for the participants to understand the KPIs
presented in the Reports module. It is relevant to highlight
that the reports of this module are very straight forward to
generate, and their filtering and ordering options are based
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Universal Access in the Information Society
on dates and amounts, which is common in this type of
systems. The presenters’ reports explain that the partici-
pants doubts about the Reports module were not on how to
generate them, but in what the KPIs mean. This is coher-
ent with the fact that most of the participants assessed the
reports as very easy to use or easy to use (Fig. 8).
The perceived usefulness of the sub-modules is summa-
rised in Figs. 6 and 7. Regarding the Sales module, both fig-
ures present the Documents sub-module as the least useful,
and the Cashier and Point of sale sub-modules as the most
useful. However, the participants perceived the compared
usefulness of the Clients sub-module assessment very differ-
ently (Fig. 7); despite the fact, this sub-module was assessed
as very useful or useful by all participants (Fig. 6) and that
this sub-module is key for generating several BI reports. The
sub-modules of the Product module are coherent in both fig-
ures, as well as the ones of the Stock and Purchases modules.
Figure 8 shows the participants’ absolute perceived
ease-of-use of the sub-modules. Figure 9 complements the
previous one by ordering the sub-modules of each module
regarding their perceived ease-of-use. However, it does not
include the Reports sub-modules as its compared ease-of-
use was assessed differently according to the highlight table
presented in Fig. 10. The reports (sub-modules) built based
on a BI approach are the following: Annual report, Dash-
board, infoClients, infoSellers, infoStore, infoSuppliers and
the Logistic control panel. The Direct file, Kardex and Pur-
chases and Sales reports were not designed based on a BI
approach but to support operational requirements.
It is important to highlight that the infoStore is the only BI
report chosen as one of the three most useful reports by most
of the participants (9). Two of the BI reports (infoSellers
Universal Access in the Information Society
and Logistic control panel) were chosen as one of the three
least useful by almost half of the participants (7) followed
by the infoSuppliers one (6). Comparing these choices with
the perceived reports understandability, the infoStore report
was chosen as one of the three most understandable by 11
participants, followed by the infoSellers (7) and the info-
Clients (6) reports. On the other hand, the Logistic control
panel was chosen as on of the three least understandable
by 10 participants, followed by the Direct file (8) and the
Purchases and Sales (7) reports.
Figure 10 shows some interesting relationships between
the reports usefulness and understandability. The DirectFile
was assessed as one of the least understandable reports. The
infoClients report is considered as understandable but only 4
participants assessed it as one of the most useful ones and 3
assessed it as one of the least useful. The infoSellers is also
one of the most understandable reports and is also perceived
as one of the least useful ones. The infoSuppliers is less
understandable than the infoClients and infoSellers reports,
but it is also assessed as one of the least useful ones. The
Logistic control panel is perceived as one of the least useful
and the least understandable reports.
The presenters’ reports about the usability evaluation
sessions provide insights to complement the data shown in
Fig. 10. The participants with basic data exploration skills
(e.g., MS Excel pivot tables and dynamic charts) considered
the DirectFile report as useful; however, participants that
considered this report as one of the least understandable
explained they would not have the skills or time to exploit
the data in it. The infoClients was not on the top of most
useful reports as some participants considered the way they
manage their clients was good enough. The infoSellers
report was assessed as one of the least useful as the partici-
pants consider they know their sellers well enough. The info-
Store is by far the most useful and understandable BI report.
The participants were able to understand this report easily
and showed interest in what it presents. The gap between
understandability and usefulness in the Kardex and Pur-
chases & Sales reports is because these reports are impor-
tant for accounting processes and used by their accountants.
Finally, the Logistic control panel was considered the least
understandable and useful, which is supported by the queries
made by the Participants about the KPIs shown in this report
to which they were not familiar with nor interested.
Figures 11, 12, 13, 14 show the presenters’ perception
regarding how well they explained the system modules, and
how difficult was it for them to explain them. The answers
to both questions are coherent and present the Stock module
as the one perceived as the best explained and the easiest to
explain. The module is followed by the Purchases, Sales,
Products and Reports modules, respectively. The Reports
module is the worst assessed according to these criteria,
and the presenters’ reports about the usability evaluation
sessions support this assessment by highlighting the difficul-
ties about explaining some basic KPIs that were shown in
the reports of this module.
5.2 Business Intelligence for Peruvian MSE retailers
One of the main strengths of the retail MSEs involved in the
experiments is their customer service. They have the abil-
ity to build customer loyalty and retain their clients based
on personalised treatment and bargaining. Their customer
service is the basis of their sales process and leads to a word
of mouth recommendation of their businesses. However,
this customer service praxis sometimes leads them to losses
because they do not use KPIs besides their daily sales. BI
tools can enhance their customer service by giving them
information about their balance point, the performance of
their products brands and families, their most profitable
products, their best customers, product rotation, and so on.
This information could boost their decision-making process
to be more confident in knowing, for instance, what products
to offer in the bargain, what discounts they can commit to,
which clients to negotiate with, amongst others important
daily decisions.
One of the most important findings obtained from the
interaction with the Peruvian retail MSEs’ owners and
employees is that the control of their business operations
is probably their most critical issue to address. This lack of
control does not allow them to take advantage of opportu-
nities that can lead them to having more sales and profits.
Their stock control, as part of their stock management strat-
egy, is deficient as they do not know what products and how
much of these they have in their stores and warehouses. All
this leads them to make improvised decisions that are based
on their instincts and experience. BI can also aid Peruvian
MSE retailers in improving the control of their business
operations by providing strategic information about their
sellers, clients, products and stock.
Section 3.1 showed that the Peruvian MSE retailers’
owners and strategic employees involved in the stage 1
experiment are aware of the importance of using DDDM
approaches to support their business operations. They are
also aware of their business not using enough tools to aid
DDDM in their operations. Section 4.2.1 shows that the par-
ticipants of the usability evaluation are also keen on using
information systems to support their daily operations and
management, support their DDDM and improve their effi-
ciency. Despite this, the results of Bit24 usability evaluation
show that the participants did not find most of the BI reports
as the most useful ones. The infoStore was the only report
assessed as one of the most useful, and three BI reports
(infoSellers, infoSuppliers, Logistic control panel) were
even assessed as one of the least useful. Considering that the
BI reports were designed to show standard KPIs related to
13

the retail sector (see Table 4) and followed the same screen
design patters of the overall system whose ease-of-use was
assessed positively (see Fig. 4), the presenters’ reports about
the sessions provide evidence suggesting the participants did
not assessed the BI reports better due to a lack of knowledge
to interpret them (Dashboard, Logistic control panel), them
feeling they know their business enough (infoClients, info-
Sellers), and a lack of interest in knowing more specificities
about their business (Annual report, infoSuppliers).
BI tools can aid Peruvian MSE retailers to be more com-
petitive in the market. It can be said that BI could give them
a competitive advantage over their pairs. However, from
another point of view, it can also be said that implementing
BI is a must for MSE retailers in order to gain some market
share from bigger retailers or even to maintain their com-
petitiveness. Digital transformation is an ongoing process in
Peruvian MSE retailers, and it is a good chance for them to
have the implementation of BI tools as an important mile-
stone in the path of their digitalisation.
Nevertheless, there are several issues that could affect
their intentions of using BI to support their business opera-
tions. Firstly, gaining knowledge to understand and interpret
the basic KPIs that should be considered in their decision-
making is essential for them to take advantage of BI tools.
This can be tackled by training decision-makers on this sub-
ject. Another issue is the feeling of not needing more data
about the processes and actors they think they know well
enough. This cultural issue can also be faced by training
decision-makers on the benefits they could get from exploit-
ing their data. BI tools providers for MSE retailers should
consider the specific characteristics of MSE retailers in order
to include those KPIs that will be useful for them and avoid
a features and cognitive overload that is not useful to their
contexts.
There is also a significant drawback brought by informal-
ity: some MSE retailers do not want to register everyday
transactions in their information systems for several rea-
sons (e.g., avoid taxation). Informality impacts retailers at
several operational levels. One of the most obvious is their
stock control and management. In the specific subject of
their digitalisation process, the loss of data about their busi-
nesses operation limits their capacity to exploit information
for their decision-making process, not permitting them to
harness this critical asset.
5.3 Future work
Peruvian MSE retailers are still far from being digitalised
businesses and considerable efforts must be made to aid them
in reaching this goal. Implementation of BI tools, as part
or consequence of this digitalisation process, is important
for them to improve their operations. Part of this process is
reducing the gap between how these retailers operate and their
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Universal Access in the Information Society
knowledge about management, and the features that regular
BI systems offer. This gap should be reduced from both ends.
It is important to adapt BI systems to the simpler and less
control operation style of MSE retailers, which include the
design of reports supporting decision-making. Another key
challenge to face is training MSE retailers decision-makers in
understanding, interpreting and using KPIs that are relevant to
their businesses’ operations. For instance, logistic indicators
about stock control (e.g., product rotation) could increase their
benefits quickly, but are more complex to interpret than other
more common sales indicators.
BI tools providers should consider this previously explained
gap in the development of their products in order to offer fea-
tures that are useful to their clients and avoid unnecessary
extra-cost, which is a sensitive factor for Peruvian MSE retail-
ers. For instance, retailers should aim to implement business
analytics features allowing them to predict and prescribe but,
at this stage, Peruvian MSE retailers need to digitalise their
data and explore their historical information to aid their daily
decision-making. Predictive and prescriptive reports could be
unnecessary and costly features for them. Providers must also
adapt to the fact that these businesses are sometimes under
the shadow of informality due to several reasons like the
bureaucratic procedures to become formal, the entrepreneurs
perceptions about becoming formal enterprises, not enough
benefits to pay taxes, and others [22]. Peru is a developing
economy whose informality rate has been the second highest
in Latin America in the last three decades [12]. Some formal
businesses would not even be willing to register and officially
report all their data.
It is important to highlight that the employees and enter-
prises that participated in the experiments of this research
project have different characteristics and are at different digi-
tal maturity stages. This article aims at reporting the findings
from the usability evaluation in order to start new conver-
sations and feed some old ones in the research area. More
research on the subject is still needed in order to aid Peruvian
MSE retailers in this digitalisation process. Future research
could involved studying indicators that are useful for them
and not for larger companies (and vice versa) in order to have
BI reports more suitable to their needs, designing dashboards
using more down-to-earth KPIs that are easier to understand,
designing classification modules allowing easier management
of their products, clients, stock, sellers and others that are used
as dimensions in BI reports, and begin studying predictive and
prescriptive features that MSE retailer would like to use.
6 Conclusions
Information systems are relevant for the development of
businesses, and Peruvian MSE retailers are aware of this.
The retailers involved in this research project know that
Universal Access in the Information Society
using DDDM approaches can boost their business, although
their use level of these approaches is less that what they
desire. The results of the experiments assessing Bit24 usabil-
ity show that the Reports module implementing BI tools
is perceived as the second most useful of the system five
modules. The Sales module is the only one assessed better
than the reports module. The research project also shows
that some standard BI reports used by large retailers are not
perceived as useful by the Peruvian MSE retailers that took
part in the research project. The experiments also provide
insights about participants not being able to understand KPIs
presented in some standard BI reports, perceiving they do
not need information about some processes and actors for
decision-making, and not knowing what to do with some
information shown by BI reports. Despite being aware of the
need of using DDDM approaches, there is a gap between the
technical knowledge, needs and perceived needs of Peruvian
MSE retailers, what standard BI reports provide and the way
they provide this information. Efforts to reducing this gap
from both ends are needed to facilitate the implementation
of BI tools in Peruvian MSE retailers to support their busi-
ness operations. The research work proposes future work to
aid in this process.
Acknowledgements This research work was supported by the Pro-
grama Nacional de Desarrollo Tecnológico e Innovación - PROIN-
NOVATE, Ministerio de la Producción - Perú. Project code: PVER-
1-P-065-20. Contract: 040-FIDECOM-INNOVATEPERU-PVER-2020.
Data availibility The data that support the findings of this study are
not openly available and are available from the corresponding author
upon reasonable request.
Declarations
Conflict of interest The authors state that there is no conflict of inter-
est.
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