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Top1. Introduction
Banks are financial institutions which mainly intermediate between units with surplus fund (depositors) and deficit units (borrowers) in need of funds. According to Ofanson, Aigbokhaevbolo and Enabulu (2010), banks are the hubs of productive activity that perform the vital role of financial intermediation and effecting good payments system as well as assisting in monetary policy implementation. The banking services in developing countries like Nigeria have in recent years transformed, aided by the adoption and implementation of information technology (IT) (Krishna, 2015). IT solutions refer to hardware, software, which include servers, operating systems, business application and databases (He, Zhang & Li, 2021). The intense competition within the banking sector has driven banks to innovate, compete, and generate value for customers with short-term or long-term benefits (Campanella, Della Peruta & Del Giudice, 2017). This is being achieved through implementation of information technology. This technology-aided banking services have not only brought with it diverse, quicker and more efficient service delivery, but also wider reach in coverage area and an increase in number of banked. According to Hussein, Rosita and Avuni (2019), the increasing use of IT solutions enable wider access to information.
As with other sectors, clients and business partners request for improved services from Nigerian banks (Asiyanbi & Ishola, 2018). The banking institutions are aware of the clients’ need for efficient services and are striving to the challenge while relying on IT solutions. The increasing level of competition is also forcing them to integrate new technologies to retain their customers. The problem is that the banking information technologies that are used to provide those services are frequently challenged by technical and non-technical factors (Adeniji & Akinbode, 2018). On the technical front, the challenges include factors such as low availability, low performance and security breaches in the IT solutions (Lei et al., 2014). Some of the non-technical factors include processes, misalignment of strategies, IT personnel skills and management approach (Almalki, Al-fleit & Zafar, 2017).
These challenges have brought to fore, some of the realities that manifest in the performances of many Nigerian banking institutions (Chukwudi & Amah, 2018; Inegbedion, 2018). Also, the IT solutions are challenged, and this has put its reliability to test as expected services are not delivered to clients and business partners (Kyari & Akinwale, 2020; Nkiru, Sidi & Abomeh, 2018). Maintaining reliability, security and accuracy of IT solutions in organisations is a big challenge to IT management (Islam, Manivannan & Zeadally, 2016). Dwivedi et al. (2015) assert that despite the efforts to understand the underlying factors, IT solutions failure rate remains stubbornly high.
These problems exist primarily because either the IT solutions used are not evaluated or not frequently evaluated, which affects early detection of deficiencies (Williams, Maharaj & Ojo, 2019; Mkpojiogu & Asuquo, 2018). The lack of effective and efficient evaluation of IT solution is because of non-existing customised framework to do so (Benedict, 2016). Thus, this problem affects both the customers and the service providers (banks), from the perspective of competitiveness, profitability and sustainability. Consequently, this problem of lack of appropriate model or framework to evaluate the banking IT solutions affects the economy of the country, in that poor services continue to be rendered, and increase losses in millions (Chukwudi & Amah, 2018; Chaysin, Daengdej & Tangjitprom, 2016). This problem is prevalent in developing countries like Nigeria that struggle to have and implement a customised model to evaluate their banking IT solutions (Kyari & Akinwale, 2020; Gana, Abdulhamid & Ojeniyi, 2019; Ololade & Ogbeide, 2017).