An exploration study on influential factors on information and communication technology

Article history: Received January 15, 2013 Accepted August 12, 2013 Available online August 14 2013 During the past few years, information and communication technology (ICT) has revolutionized banking industry in the world. People are now able to do their business banking activities such as bill payments, transfer funds, etc. through the art of ICT features such as automatic teller machines, internet or telephone banking services. This paper performs an empirical investigation to find important factors influencing ICT implementation in Iranian banking industry. The survey uses factor analysis to find important factors using a questionnaire consist of 26 variables. Cronbach alpha is calculated as 0.901, which validates the questionnaire. The survey detects six factors influencing ICT including efficiency approach, new advanced technological achievements, human resource management, service strategy, growth strategy and supporting systems. © 2014 Growing Science Ltd. All rights reserved.


Introduction
Information and communication technology (ICT) plays essential role in banking sector, while banking industry is a real engine of every robust economy.In fact, when banking industry fails to operate properly, the whole economy will be jeopardized.The impact of globalization, competition and innovation in the banking industry by its providers to offer their services makes it necessity to realize how different perspectives of consumer behavior influence the innovation and respond to customer service delivery (Van den Berg et al., 2008;Mohamed & Moradi, 2011).Abubakar and Tasmin (2012) performs an investigation to review the literature with an objective to investigate the effect of ICT on banks performance and customer service delivery.They also examined the effect of ICT on banks' performance to verify whether banks have successfully reached effective customer's service delivery, by providing high level of customer service through online delivery channel, besides operating cost minimization and revenue maximization.
Banking industry has become highly ICT based and due to its inter-sectoral link, it is reaping the advantages of technological revolution as evidenced by its application in most of its operations.Osabuohien (2008) performed an empirical investigation of the anticipated role ICT has in enhancing the operations of some selected Nigerian banks.They stated that the need for the banks to regularly train their workers, and procure quality ICT gadgets, which would enhance efficiency was necessary to improve the banking sector.An implementation of other useful techniques such as Six Sigma could also improve profitability (Shoebridge, 2005).Vilaseca-Requena et al. (2007) looked to explore the role that ICT played in the processes of product innovation and marketing -as an element that strengthens the cooperation and communication among various agents within the innovation project, reducing the barriers to innovation and enhancing the development of differentiated products as well.They stated that intensive ICT implementation in marketing makes the company more innovative, as it perceives that its usage breaks down obstacles to innovation and speeds up processes that in turn become more productive.In addition, increasing ICT implementation in marketing helps company predisposition to cooperate with and integrate particular agents within the business environment in the business development using innovation process, improving the degree of adaptation of the new product to market demands.Agbolade (2011) investigated the role of ICT to increase banks profitability in Nigeria.He explained that the role of information in the actualization of different organizational objectives could not be over-emphasized.They reported that a positive correlation exists between ICT and banks profitability in Nigeria, which means that a marginal change in the level of the investment and adoption of ICT in the banking industry will yield to a proportionate increase in the profit level.Southard and Siau (2004) performed a comprehensive survey on online e-banking retail initiatives.Sullivan (2000) investigated how the adoption of internet banking influenced performance and risk in banks and discussed that while the existence of such services could contribute to banking industry, there must be some cautious on protecting the customers' information through secure implementation of information technology.Baliamoune-Lutz (2003) performed an analysis of the determinants and effects of ICT diffusion in developing countries.

The proposed study
This paper performs an empirical investigation to find important factors influencing ICT implementation in Iranian banking industry.The population of this survey includes all regular customers who do banking business with one of Iranian banks named Bank Mellat located in city of Tehran, Iran.The sample size is calculated as follows, where N is the sample size, represents the probability, 2 /  z is CDF of normal distribution and finally  is the error term.For our study we assume and e=0.99, the number of sample size is calculated as N=159.The survey uses factor analysis to find important factors using a questionnaire consist of 26 variables.
Cronbach alpha has been calculated as 0.891 in preliminary stage and final 0.901 in final stage, which are statistically acceptable.In addition, Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy is calculated as 0.844, which is within an acceptable limit and validates the results.Since factor analysis is sensitive on skewness of factors, we have decided to delete 11 questions.Fig. 1 demonstrates Scree plot on questions of the survey.Table 3 demonstrates the results of our factor analysis.As we can observe from the results of Fig. 1 and Table 1, there are six factors influencing ICT including efficiency approach, new advanced technological achievements, human resource management, service strategy, growth strategy and supporting systems.

The results
In this section, we present details of six influencing factors on ICT implementation.

The first factor: efficiency
The first factor is associated with efficiency strategy, which includes four factors as follows, As we can observe from the results of Table 2, recording customer information is the most important component followed by supporting their right, hiring highly educated people and processing information.

New advanced technological achievements
The second factor is associated with new advanced technological achievements, which includes four factors summarized in Table 3 as follows, The results of Table 3 indicate that SMS alarming services play important role in accessing advanced technological achievement followed by automated payment systems, distance services and capability of accessing digital signature.

Human resource management
Human resource management is the third factor and it includes four factors summarized in Table 4 as follows,

Table 4
The summary of factors influencing human resource management The results of Table 4 indicate that potential of having various multi-media is number one priority followed by information circulation, productivity improvement, removing barrier to reach more innovations and social network and communication.

Service strategy
The fourth factor is associated with service strategy, which includes three factors summarized in Table 5 as follows, The results of Table 5 demonstrate that providing email services is number one priority followed by outsourcing features and using intranet services.

Growth opportunities
The fifth factor is associated with new growth opportunities, which includes four factors summarized in Table 6 as follows, The results of Table 6 indicate that having efficient websites play important role in accessing growth opportunities followed by investment, national access to internet and scientific research.

Supporting systems
The last factor is related to supporting systems, which includes four factors summarized in Table 7 as follows, The results of Table 7 indicate that quality of maintenance of ICT components is number one priority in supporting systems followed by levels of profitability, training and learning and health of internet.

Conclusion
In this paper, we have presented an empirical investigation to study the influential factors on implementation of banking industry.The study has explained that ICT has become a primary source of sustainable growth in banking industry.The study has implemented factor analysis to find six important factors including efficiency approach, new advanced technological achievements, human resource management, service strategy, growth strategy and supporting systems.The study has shed

Table 3
The results of total variance explained

Table 2
The summary of factors influencing efficiency

Table 3
The summary of factors influencing new advanced technological achievements

Table 5
The summary of factors influencing service strategy

Table 6
The summary of factors influencing growth opportunities

Table 7
The summary of factors influencing supporting systems