Individual level determinants model for benefit use of business intelligence in Malaysian manufacturing organizations

Abstract

Over the past few years, there has been an uplifting trend in the usage of Business Intelligence (BI) in the manufacturing sector. The implementation of BI in the industry has helped many manufacturing organizations improve their business processes, by solving manufacturing issues and ensuring high efficiency. Despite the predominant implementation of BI in manufacturing organizations, there were still failures reported in the implementation of it, in which it could be due to the lack of readiness for the BI implementation and processing itself. The lack of readiness can be attributed not only to the technical aspects of the BI, but also to the social aspects of it, such as those related to humans and change management. Many studies were conducted on Critical Success Factors (CSF) of BI in manufacturing organizations; however, there were less studies conducted on the individual determinants for benefit use of BI in manufacturing organizations. The research of determinants for benefit utilization of BI that incorporate individual aspects is still underexplored in Malaysian manufacturing organizations. Therefore, this research aims to understand the potential factors that influence the benefit use of BI in Malaysian manufacturing industry. This study developed a model by integrating Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use Technology (UTAUT) and DeLone and McLean’s (D&M) model to explore individual factors that affect benefit use of BI. A set of constructs and their interrelationships were formulated as the research hypotheses from the unification of theoretical backgrounds and interdisciplinary literatures related to BI in manufacturing. By surveying 477 employees of Malaysian manufacturing firms, a quantitative approach was utilized to test twelve hypotheses of the proposed model. All the survey data were analyzed utilizing IBM SPSS Statistics 24 and SmartPLS 3.0 based on Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). The results indicated that the following factors are the most significant determinants that influenced the benefit use of BI—training, top management’s influence, performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating condition, effective use and user satisfaction. In addition, this study also revealed that there is no significant relationship between training and facilitating condition, and between training and effective use. Theoretically, this study empirically proposed a new model based on UTAUT and D&M models in the context of developing countries for individual determinants that influence the benefit use of the system. Practically, this model presented a guideline encompassing user-related issues that practitioners and manufacturers might apply during the design and implementation of BI.