Model for Assessing Mobile Business Intelligence Readiness within South African Telecommunications Industry

Abstract

To determine what needs to be done, organisations throughout the world need the capability to find out quickly, what is happening and why it happened. Therefore, having the intelligence to make informed decisions at the right time and place is the key to success in today's dynamic environment. As mobile systems become increasingly available, more accessible, and better performing, data gathering and analysis can be performed off-site and on-site with greater flexibility, in turn extending Business Intelligence (BI) to mobile devices, commonly known as Mobile Business Intelligence (MBI). However, the MBI implementations remain unexplored and unsupported even with the sturdy increase in mobile technology adoption, especially in developing world like South Africa where it is the most viable option. The study aims to establish the MBI readiness factors and developed a model for these organisations to assess their MBI readiness, using South African telecommunications industry as a case. The study employed quantitative research approach, where a closed-ended questionnaires were used as the primary data collection method. Finding suggest a number of key factors significant to MBI readiness in context including Culture, Enterprise Mobility, Organisational Capability, Infrastructure, Security, Skills, Support, etc. The MBI readiness model and its validated elements provide a new way of identifying and verifying critical factors for MBI.