Critical success factors for business intelligence in the South African banking sector

Abstract

With the advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, data are more valuable than ever for any banking organization. Business Intelligence enables organizations to make informed decisions based on the data they collect. However, when organisations embark on implementing Business Intelligence systems, the majority of these systems are not always successfully implemented and do not perform as intended. This failure and difficulty associated with Business Intelligence projects is attributed to, among other factors, complexity of disparate data sources, high costs, lack of expertise, and huge data volumes. Critical success factors are important to ensure the success of any project. Therefore, it is vital to understand on which critical success factors to focus when implementing Business Intelligence. The purpose of this study was to determine which of the critical success factors for Business Intelligence systems are regarded as important in the context of organisations in South Africa’s banking sector. A set of 15 critical success factors are derived from previous research and from these, hypotheses are drawn on each one. A Likert-type questionnaire was used to test the hypotheses that are then analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The results of the study show that 14 of the 15 critical success factors are important.