Empirical Assessment of the Effectiveness of Business Intelligence Tools: Case of Free State Government Departments

In this paper, we employ a multi-pronged analytical approach (qualitative survey and factor analysis) to empirically analyze the usage and effectiveness of a widely used business intelligence tool, namely the Vulindela System (VS) in prominent service-oriented government departments (Provincial Treasury, Health and CoGTA) in the Free State province in South Africa. Using the novel Task Technology Fit theoretical framework proposed by Goodhue (1995) as an evaluation benchmark, we compute two principal component analysis (PCA) models to identify key latent features of the VS technology. We find evidence for both bi-directional and unidirectional links between the operational capacity, usability and functionality of the VS and executed tasks, productivity and decision-making capability of the main users. The empirical result suggest that the strength of VS lies in its ability to perform unstructured tasks, collate information, improve decision making and productivity but the operational capacity and functionality of the system is constrained due to incompatibility to meet user’s task profile and inflexibility to execute new task demanded. Based on these findings, the reliability and usability of the VS can be improved by testing the system in different network environment and continuous development of new software, upgrade of operating systems.