Usability guidelines for business intelligence banking reports: a mixed methods study in the South African banking industry

Abstract

Business intelligence (BI) reports are vital for the success of the banking industry, since these reports give data-based insights to the end-user groups from different business units to inform operational, strategic and tactical decisions. The problem is that these BI reports are often not used. The adoption and optimal use of these reports depend on various factors, one of those being usability. Besides the business problem observed by the researcher as an employee of a big South African bank, published research on the usability of BI banking reports is lacking. For this reason, this study investigated and identified the critical usability criteria that should be used to evaluate BI banking reports. The research was guided by the question: What are the critical usability criteria that should be used to evaluate the BI banking reports? The research design for the study employed mixed methods, with pragmatism as the guiding philosophy. The BI usability criteria were identified in the literature and used as the basis for designing the research instruments, which included a survey and interviews with employees, all of whom were BI users in a South African bank. In addition to the primary data gathered from these employees, company issue log data was obtained from a bank portal that documented usability issues reported by the same BI users involved in the empirical data collection process. The literature-based usability criteria were compared with the findings gleaned from the bank portal analysis and the survey, respectively to propose two sets of criteria. These sets of usability criteria for BI banking reports were triangulated with the findings of the analysis of the interview data to produce the critical usability criteria for BI banking reports (final set of criteria). The theoretical contribution of the study is the evidence-based, critical usability criteria for BI banking reports. These usability criteria address the gaps in the existing knowledge concerning the usability of BI reports in the banking industry. On a practical level, the criteria can be used to better understand and optimise the use of business intelligence banking reports