Operational business intelligence (OpBI) integrates data of business processes to analyse their performance in relation to organizational goals. The consequent decision-making concerns a timely recognition and execution of actions to maintain performant business processes. OpBI systems can be designed according to a firm-specific definition of requirements guided by considerations from business model, business process and information system perspective. However, there is no approach to link the design of OpBI jointly with characteristics of business models and business processes, yet. The paper uses therefore an action research method and proposes a business approach that combines e3value with the work system framework to set up conceptual application designs for an OpBI-reliant decision support. We report on results of a long-term research project to demonstrate the development and application of our approach in four different business scenarios. The findings include implications towards a business-oriented application design of OpBI systems.