Industry 4.0 is a new era of industrial revolution in which textile and apparel (T&A) companies are adopting and integrating advanced technologies to achieve sustainability and a competitive edge. Previous studies have just focused on the perspective of big data utilization in Industry 4.0 and neglected the role of business intelligence systems (BIS), especially in the T&A industry. The current study is one of the first to investigate the determinants of BIS adoption with an eye towards understanding how BIS can resolve sustainability issues in T&A companies with Industry 4.0 technologies. Methodology: A qualitative research approach is applied with 14 semi-structured in-depth interviews from 12 of the world’s high-end T&A companies. The snowball and purposeful sampling strategy is used to select the participants. The qualitative content analysis technique is used to analyze the interview data. Results: The findings revealed various themes, such as sustainability issues in T&A companies, improved value creation processes with leading BI solutions, and perceived difficulties in the adoption of BIS. Major improvements are perceived in the apparel retail business because apparel companies are more prone to adopt the Industry 4.0 technologies with advanced business intelligence (BI) solutions. The results prove the pivotal role of economic sustainability in the adoption of BIS and Industry 4.0 technologies in T&A companies.

Race towards industry 4.0 increases the hyper competition and puts pressure on organizations to integrate the advanced technologies. Business intelligence system (BIS) is one of the top prioritized technologies that attracted the significant attention of policy-makers and industry experts due to its ability to provide more informed and intelligent knowledge for decision-making processes. It is evident by literature that organizations and industries are prone to integrate the BIS at large scale, but more than 70% BIS projects fail to give the expected results. Hence, it is pertinent to explore the significant determinants that influence the BIS adoption and acceptance in organizations. Although previous literature did not have any comprehensive review relevant to the individual, technological, organizational, and environmental determinants. Therefore, the current study tries to narrow this gap by a systematic literature review (SLR) of 84 studies that were published during the period of 2011–2020. A total of 93 determinants are identified based on content analysis by using text mining techniques of Yoshikoder and human coding skills. The identified determinants are ranked according to their frequency of use. A theoretical framework has been developed with potential determinants and theories. The study results will enrich the recent BIS literature and improve the understanding of practitioners’ decision-making processes to leverage maximum value from the adoption of BIS.

The textile and apparel industry is one of the biggest competitive industries in the world. Nowadays, industry 4.0 concepts put pressures on textile and apparel companies to integrate advanced technologies. Consequently, Business Intelligence (BI) systems are diffusing rapidly to process large data sets to harness the true value of smart technologies. Regardless of its potentials, most textile and apparel companies are lagging and hesitating to adopt this credible innovation in the presence of a high failure rate (70%-80%) especially in developing countries. To achieve the successful adoption of BI systems, statistical assessment is required to better understand this complex phenomenon. Therefore, a BI system model based on Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) is developed to evaluate the role of potential determinants pertaining to the users, technology, organization, and environment. Data were collected using a survey with self-administered questionnaires from decision-makers with authoritative designations in the textile and apparel industry, academia, and software companies. Influential relationships among critical determinants were assessed and validated by using Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) approach. The results of this study would contribute to the success of costly BI system projects and will motivate the industry experts to potentially assign investments for the BI projects in the developing countries to sustain in the competitive markets.

The textile and apparel industry is prone to digitization with business intelligence systems (BIS) and big data concepts to contribute the global sustainability. BIS, an impactful and leading technology, is being implemented in many industrial sectors but almost 80% of BIS fail to give expected results due to unknown reasons. Although many scholars put effort into finding the influential determinants for the BIS implementation, they neglect the BIS adoption context, especially in the textile and apparel industry. A purposive and proportionate choice of potential determinants in the context of adoption would contribute significantly to the success of BIS. Multi-stage research is employed to identify and prioritize the significant determinants. In the first stage, twenty-two semi-structured in-depth interviews are conducted with seventeen textile and apparel companies. Ten significant determinants emerged after thematic analysis of interview data. The determinants are sustainability, competitive pressure, market trends, compatibility, technology maturity, leadership commitment and support, satisfaction with existing systems, sustainable data quality and integrity, users’ traits, and interpersonal communications that influence the adoption of BIS. In the second stage, the Best Worst Method (BWM) is used to calculate the weights for prioritizing the determinants based on experts’ opinion. These weights are then used to evaluate and rank the determinants. The findings of this research show that the leadership commitment and support, sustainability, users’ traits, and technology maturity, are the top-ranked determinants that influence the practitioners’ choice to adopt the BIS in the textile and apparel industry. The results of this study enable the BIS stakeholders to holistically comprehend the significant determinants that would drive or impede the success of BIS projects in the sustainable textile and apparel industry.