Journal of Internet Banking and Commerce ISSN: 1204-5357
ISSN: 1204-5357
+44-175-271-2024| Omoniyi EO1* and Omoniyi ST2 |
| Corresponding Author:Omoniyi EO, Department of Business Administration, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria, Tel: +234 805 407 6335; E-mail: sholomvision@yahoo.com |
| Received August 01, 2015; Accepted September 14, 2015; Published September 17, 2015 |
| Citation: Omoniyi EO, Omoniyi ST (2015) An Assessment of Benefits and Challenges of Information and Communication Technology to Office Managers in the Banking Industry. J Internet Bank Commer 20:122. |
| Copyright: © 2015 Omoniyi EO, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
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The objective of this paper is to assess the benefits and the challenges of information and communication technology (ICT) to office managers in the banking industry, in order to ascertain the level of success of ICT to the industry, using questionnaire administered to bank staff and customers (n = 130) of Access Bank Plc and Skye Bank Plc in Bida, Niger State, Nigeria. The findings indicated that the office managers of the banks have high rate of exposure to modern information technology IT. The banks staff opined that IT has resulted to reduction in the cost of operations. About 50 percentile of the staff ranked the rate at which IT enhances the confidentiality of information as high. However, the study led to the inference that the staff of the two banks have very low rate for acquiring new skills through capacity development. About 60 percentile of the bank staff have very high tendency to respond to changes in innovation brought about by IT; while 75 percentile indicated that the use of IT by office managers leads to very low rate of fraudulent access to stored information. Also, 58 percentile of the bank customers rated the ease of access to their account as excellent due to the use of IT; and ranked IT excellent in terms of the time saved by customers in accessing their accounts. In addition, the customers rated the use of IT in boosting inter-bank relationship as very good. The challenges of IT to customer service as stated by the customers are: fraud by bank staff (0.5%), delay in inter-bank transaction (10%), poor communication network (40%), poor computer literacy (29.5%), and bridge in the relationship between staff and customers (20%). Therefore, workshop and enlightenment is needed for capacity development on ICT in order to maximally utilize the benefits.
Keywords |
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| Office managers; ICT; Bank staff; Cost of operations; Capacity development; Fraudulent access | ||||||
Introduction |
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| Office management is the art of managing the office through planning, organizing, directing, coordinating and controlling, in order to achieve organizational goals [1]. Office management do respond to the advancement in industrial revolution, there was introduction of the typewriter in the 1840s followed by stenotypes machine, duplicators, and many other types [2]. Office managers make use of adequate facilities for acquiring the relevant data, storing, retrieving and disseminating information needed for maximizing productivity and achievement of the set goals of the organization with minimal manpower and cost [3]. | ||||||
| Technology has become something of great importance in the world today, to the extent that it is taking the place of human. Technology does the activities of humans like: pounding of yam, washing of cloths, debit payment to bank customers and even serves as securities in offices like banks. No establishment can function properly without the use of technology; this without doubt has enhanced the effectiveness and efficiency of office managers [4]. | ||||||
| The challenges of office management in an era of information technology stem from lack of office equipment, inadequate trained personnel to handle the information technology equipment, lack of right equipment to store and retrieve information, inability of equipment to retain information for as long as desired, fraudulent assess to stored information and the level of literacy about information technology among the staff of the organization and customers [5,6]. | ||||||
| Easy access to accurate information can determine whether an organization will survive or not. In the current era, office/business, professional or governmental organizations are in a state of change due to electronic technology (information technology) that has replaced the traditional equipment used by an office manager, and has modified the tasks being performed [7]. | ||||||
| Many establishments have ended up in managerial disaster due to poor usage of information technology, this keeps threatening the financial status of organizations especially financial institutions due to fraudulent withdrawals of banks’ and customers’ funds [8]. | ||||||
| This study is aimed to assess the benefits and challenges that information technology has on some banks and their customers, and intends to suggest how information technology can be properly managed for better service delivery to bank customers alongside optimum profits to banks [9]. | ||||||
Methodology |
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Research questions |
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| (1) To what extent has information technology benefited the job performances of some commercial banks in Bida, Niger State, Nigeria? [10] | ||||||
| (2) What are the challenges of bank office managers in an era of information technology? | ||||||
| (3) What are the benefits of information technology on bank service delivery to customers in this era? | ||||||
| (4) What are the challenges of information technology on the delivery of satisfaction by bank to their customers? | ||||||
Technique of data collection |
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| Questionnaire was the major data collection tools used in the study. | ||||||
| Questionnaire: The collection of the required data for this study was carried out by the use of structured questionnaire, the survey contained items on the studied variables on a 1-4 Likert-type scale for the bank office managers and a 1- 5 Likert-type scale for the bank customers. The questionnaire comprised both structured (closed) and unstructured (open ended) questions. The scale comprised of: 1 – Very low; 2 – Low; 3 – High; 4 – Very High; and 1 – Poor; 2 – fair; 3 – Good; 4 – Very Good; 5 – Excellent. | ||||||
| A simple random sampling method was adopted in the administration of questionnaire to the bank staff (20 from each bank) and customers (70 from each bank customer) of Access Bank and Skye Bank Plc, Bida, Niger State, Nigeria in June, 2010. The population size for the collected responses used for the study was one hundred and forty (n = 130). The data collected were analyzed and presented in Tables and percentages for easy discussion [11,12]. | ||||||
Results and Discussion |
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| For the entire questionnaire distributed, 130 of the respondents had their data available for collection, thus: | ||||||
| Access bank: Office management staff – 17, Customers – 65 | ||||||
| Skye bank: Office management staff – 13, Customers – 35 | ||||||
| Few of the benefits stated by the office managers (bank staff of Access bank and Skye Bank, Bida) are presented in Table 1 and are discussed below. From the results 7.7% and 0% of the respondents from Skye Bank and Access bank respectively indicated that their rate of exposure to modern IT (information technology) was very low, 11.8% from Access bank indicated that the rate of exposure to modern IT is low compared to 15.5% from Skye bank, while 58.7% from Access Bank indicated that the rate was high compared to 61.5% from Skye Bank. | ||||||
| 23.5% and 15.3% of the respondents from Access Bank and Skye Bank staff respectively opined that their rate of exposure to modern IT was very high. This finding infers that the office managers of the banks have high rate of exposure to modern information technology. This accounts for their suitability for the job they perform in the new generation banks. | ||||||
| Following from Table 1, the office managers of the Access bank and Skye Bank, Bida indicated that information and communication technology [13,14] is beneficial to office management by reducing the cost of operation with consequent efficiency and effectiveness. 15.4% and 5.8% of the respondents from Skye Bank and Access bank respectively indicated that the rate at which IT reduces cost of operation is low; however 11.8% from Access Bank indicated that the rate was high compared to 23.1% from Skye Bank. Further, 82.4% and 61.5% of the respondents from Access Bank a Banks’ service nd Skye Bank staff respectively stated that the rate at which IT reduces cost of operation is very high [15,16]. This finding infers that the office managers of the banks opined high rate of reduction in the cost of operation as a result of using IT. This is one of the benefits of technology in doing businesses. | ||||||
| In the assessment of the benefit of IT in enhancing the confidentiality of information by the office managers of the two banks; Table 1 showed that 11.7% and 7.8% of the respondents from Access Bank and Sky Bank respectively indicated that the rate at which IT enhances the confidentiality of information was low, while 58.8% from Access bank indicated that the rate at which IT enhances the confidentiality of information is high compared to 46.1% from Skye Bank, on the other hand 29.5% from Access Bank indicated that the rate was very high compared to 46.1% from Skye Bank. The study therefore indicated that about 50th percentile of the office managers of the two banks ranked the rate at which IT enhances the confidentiality of information as high. | ||||||
| As presented in Table 2, the office managers in Access Bank Plc and Skye Bank Plc, Bida highlighted from the questionnaire that the challenges of information technology to bank office managers among others are: inertia of bank office managers to acquire new skills, poor tendency of bank office managers to new innovations, and that information technology has made information to be global giving tendency to fraudulent access to stored information that would normally not be available to such people [17]. | ||||||
| From the study 64.7% and 69.2% of the respondents (office managers) from Access Bank and Skye Bank respectively opined that they have very low rate of acquiring new skills through capacity development to meet up with new trends as a result of IT. On the other hand, 11.8% and 23.1% of the respondents from Access Bank and Skye Bank respectively stated that they have high rate of acquiring new skills through capacity development to meet up with new trends as a result of IT. But 5.9% of the respondents from Access Bank indicated that they have very high rate of acquiring new skills through capacity development to meet up with new trends as a result of IT. | ||||||
| The findings led to the inference that the office managers of the two banks have very low rate of acquiring new skills through capacity development to meet up with new trends as a result of IT. | ||||||
| From the study 64.7% and 69.2% of the respondents (office managers) from Access Bank and Skye Bank respectively opined that they have very low rate of acquiring new skills through capacity development to meet up with new trends as a result of IT. On the other hand, 11.8% and 23.1% of the respondents from Access Bank and Skye Bank respectively stated that they have high rate of acquiring new skills through capacity development to meet up with new trends as a result of IT. But 5.9% of the respondents from Access Bank indicated that they have very high rate of acquiring new skills through capacity development to meet up with new trends as a result of IT. The findings led to the inference that the office managers of the two banks have very low rate of acquiring new skills through capacity development to meet up with new trends as a result of IT. | ||||||
| 5.9% and 15.4% of the office managers from Access Bank Plc and Skye Bank Plc respectively indicated that they have low tendency to respond to changes in innovation brought about by IT. However 52.9% and 72.9% of the bank office managers indicated that they have very high tendency to respond to changes in innovation brought about by IT. This led to the assertion that IT does not pose a challenge to office managers of the banks considered in this study, as about 60 percentile of the respondents stated that they have very high tendency to respond to changes in innovation brought about by IT. | ||||||
| The results indicated that 76.4% and 76.9% of the respondents from Access Bank and Skye Bank opined that by the use of IT by bank office managers the rate of fraudulent access to stored information is very low, 11.8% from Access Bank indicated that the rate of fraudulent access to stored information due to the usage of IT was low as compared to 23.1% from Skye bank, while 11.8% of the office managers from Access Bank indicated that the rate was high. This indicated that the use of IT by office managers of the two banks is not a challenge as the result with 75 percentile indicated that the use of IT by office managers of the two banks have very low rate of fraudulent access to stored information. | ||||||
| The customers of the two banks highlighted the benefits of IT to be pivotal in effective and efficient customer service delivery. Some of the benefits highlighted are: easy access to one’s account, time saving in accessing one’s account, enhances inter-bank relationship and a plethora of others. | ||||||
| The analysis of the results presented in Table 3 indicated that 56.9% of the customers from Access Bank and 60% from Skye Bank rated the ease of access to their account as excellent; 32.3% and 20% of the respondents from Access Bank and Skye Bank customers respectively rated the access to their account as a result of the use of IT to be very good. On the other hand, 17.1% of the respondents from Access Bank against 9.2% of customers of Skye bank rated the ease of access to their account as a result of using IT as good. Therefore, 58 percentile of the bank customers from Access Bank and Skye Bank rated the ease of access to their account as excellent due to the use of IT. | ||||||
| Also, 71.4% of the customers randomly selected as respondents from Skye Bank and 63.1% from Access banks rated the time saved in accessing their account due to the use of IT as excellent. In addition, 18.5% of the respondents from Access Bank and 17.2% from Skye Bank rated the time saved by the use of IT in banking operations to be very good, 15.4% of the respondents from Access Bank and 5.7% from Skye Bank rated the time saved as good. The study indicated that the use of IT was ranked excellent in terms of the time saved by customers in accessing their accounts. | ||||||
| The study indicated that 48.6% of the respondents (customers) from Skye Bank and 44.7% from Access Bank rated the use of IT in boosting inter-bank relationship as excellent, 47.7% of the respondents from Access Bank and 25.7% from Skye Bank rated inter-bank relationship as very good. This indicates that about 80 percentile of the respondents sampled as customers rated the use of IT in boosting interbank relationship very good and/ or excellent. | ||||||
| From the survey administered to the bank customers, as presented in Figure 1, the study found that he challenges of information technology to customer service are: The challenges posed by IT to customer service as stated by the customers and the percentile of the responses in the affirmative are: fraud by bank staff (0.5%), delay in inter-bank transaction (10%), poor communication network (40%), poor computer literacy (29.5%), and bridge in the relationship between bank staff and the customers (20%). The finding indicated that more acceptability of the inherent benefits of IT to bank customer service will be achieved by improved communication network by the service providers. | ||||||
Conclusion |
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| The study on the benefits and challenges of ICT to office managers in the banking industry in an era of IT showed that information technology has tremendous effects on the performance of an office manager in banks. The office managers of the banks are well exposed to state of the art and modern information technology [18]. Also IT has highly enhanced the confidentiality of information in the operations of the bank office managers. The challenges faced by office managers as enumerated by the respondents are low tendency to acquiring new skills through capacity development to meet up with new trends as a result of IT as well as fraudulent access of bank staff to stored information. The benefits of information technology amongst a plethora of others as opined by the bank customers are easy access to their accounts, time saving in accessing their accounts and enhanced relationship between banks which makes transactions from one bank to the other very easy [19]. The challenges of IT to customer service as stated by the customers are: fraud by bank staff, delay in inter-bank transaction, poor communication network, poor computer literacy, and bridge in it the relationship between bank staff and the customers. Information technology has benefited every facet of man’s endeavour, the bank office manager will step up to maximally utilize the advancement of IT for more service delivery towards achieving the organizational goals with less cost, energy and time. | ||||||
Recommendations |
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| The study discovered that information technology skills has tremendous effects on the performance of an office manager in banks and also recommended that banks should organize seminars, training and workshop for office managers and administrators that are already engaged, and to equip and update their offices to enhance smooth administration, also more emphasis should be given on information technology skills during interview for bank office managers. | ||||||
Tables at a glance |
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Figures at a glance |
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References |
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