Measuring the effectiveness of banking e-business systems in South Africa

Abstract

When the effectiveness of a system is considered, most measurements and research papers tend to report findings from the perspective of the "owners" or creators of such systems. With e-business solutions, it seems to follow the same inward focused tendency. Relatively little research is available to measure the effectiveness of systems from the perspective of a user outside the boundaries of the source of the measured system. Similarly, limited research is available when it comes to measuring the effectiveness of e-business solutions, more so for electronic banking systems. This research aims to address that lack by attempting to determine the effectiveness of specifically e-banking solutions in several different economic sectors, as used by businesses in South Africa. The research approach is three-fold. Firstly, a survey was conducted listing 32 factors which needed to be rated between one and seven on a Likert scale with 1 being the lowest and seven the highest rating. Each factor was rated twice, namely to determine the Importance as well as the Actual experience of the e-banking system. These factors are analysed to determine correlation coefficient and standard deviations in nine different categories. The methodology used was TAM. Secondly, a systematic research of available literature was conducted and analysed on several criteria. These findings were then compared against the outcomes of the research survey to determine the similarity and differences. Where large differences were found between outcomes, it is raised as possible future research topics. A third and last comparison was done against research which was published in 1987, conducted in the financial sector in South Africa, to determine the effectiveness of information systems used within these organisations (Miller and Doyle, 1987). The research was done using the Critical Success Factor Methodology. Again, the purpose was to determine the similarities and differences between the research survey conducted in this paper to the results obtained in 1987. A conclusion is then reached based on the outcome of these comparisons to determine if the research questions and hypotheses were satisfactorily supported. By comparing the questionnaire results to previous research conducted using TAM on electronic banking, a positive and supporting correlation was displayed on similar variables. The second comparison against nine categories of measurement done by Miller and Doyle (1987), displayed a very strong positive correlation and equivalent outcomes.