Lessons from BI in Public Institutions

Table 4 shows the identified dominant themes and their descriptions. These themes were identified in the theoretical framework, which underpin the interview questions. The themes are: individual characteristics, system quality characteristics, organisational culture, macro-environment factors, behavioural beliefs and attitudes, effort perception, social influence, facilitating conditions, and 'other'.

TABLE 4: Dominant emerging themes. 

Individual characteristics deal with age and the readiness for change of the managers. Organisational factors focus on management support of SAP BI, user participation in the implementation, user training, and the iterative development approach of SAP BI reports. System quality characteristics are concerned with information quality, system quality, accessibility, and the user interface of the SAP BI tool. Organisational culture deals with information readiness, information culture and change management, and macro-environment factors within the relevant business sector and competitiveness of the environment. Effort perception is the user's view on how easy the tool is to use. Social influence deals with visibility and image of the managers, whilst facilitating conditions with the technical support and report creation for SAP BI. The 'other' theme deals with placing SAP BI on the managers Information Technology Pillars Model (IPM) scorecard. These themes are described in Table 4.

Eight respondents across the directorates were interviewed. The interview duration was between 10 and 15 min. Table 5 provides an analysis of feedback from the interviews and identified relevant themes.

TABLE 5: Mapping of themes to interview documents.

The general consensus from the interviews is that managers are not using SAP BI. Managers appreciate the value of reporting; however, they are not extracting the information themselves. Many of the managers are receiving reporting information from their assistants or clerks. They are not using the tool frequently and, as a result, find the user interface difficult and cumbersome to use. They resort, therefore, to assistance from their staff, as the latter can extract the required information far more quickly than they can. The managers stated that the SAP BI training needs to be customised to their specific environment. The current training approach is more generic and deals with navigation around the tool. Customising the training would result in tailored specific needs for an area, that is, financial reporting, human resources reporting, or property management reporting. Data quality is a concern for the managers using SAP BI. Often, the SAP BI batch is completed with errors, resulting in data being incorrect. This casts doubt on the reliability of the data and results in managers using SAP R/3 instead as the main source of information. Reporting from R/3 is often slow because of the volume of data and results in managers not being able to make timely decisions or react quickly to changing circumstances. Some of the managers felt that performance of the reports was an issue, which resulted in managers not using SAP BI. The managers had different views on placing reporting on managers' IPM scorecard. Some felt strongly that this would enforce usage of the tool, whilst others felt that it would be counter-productive as managers would merely login to the tool to be 'viewed' as using SAP BI.