This chapter investigates user friendliness and user satisfaction at Ministry of Works (MoW), Kingdom of Bahrain. Literature is focused on Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), Perceived Ease of Use (PEOU) as having a positive link to user friendliness. Findings show that user friendliness has a positive and significant impact on user satisfaction. This is empirically tested with a sample of 131 employees, a quantitative approach using SPSS Version 25, Pearson Correlation, Factor and Regression Analysis. Findings contribute to the existing body of knowledge in providing insights on factors influencing user satisfaction. Limitation of the study include small sample size, convenience sampling, and no interactive effects examined. Further studies should measure other variables such as user resistance to change and environmental factors. Other studies on user confidence level could also be investigated. User confidence has a major role in improving customer satisfaction.
TopIntroduction
Ministry of Works, Bahrain, is a government entity, involved with public works in Kingdom of Bahrain. In 1992, Ministry of Works (MoW) is known as Public Works and Electricity & Water Authority. By year 2001 this government organization was re-named as Ministry of Works (MoW). The ministry’s major functions are construction and maintenance of roads, bridges, flyovers, construction of governmental buildings such as public schools and government buildings. IT Helpdesk system (aka SMART Service desk System) plays a chief role in delivering a simple and efficient means to provide IT support to users. IT Helpdesk System is an ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) system, offers an all-in-one, effective IT process, and helpdesk support.
The SMART Help Desk System has been in the market since 2007 (Smart Service Desk System, n.d.). The current IT Helpdesk system in MoW requires improvements and enhancements to improve IT services efficiency and effectiveness. There are users’ complaints on system’s interface being not user-friendly such as difficulties in searching for tickets, and inability to use the back button of webpages. User friendly is defined as being easy to use and learn. User friendly involves systems, applications, equipment, and processes (Bashir & Madhavaiah, 2014) from computers or in the field of IT, with a clear interface, easy navigation, and is well organized (Sönmez, 2018, & Mai, Tuan, Yoshi, 2013). Moreover, a user-friendly interface is concise and well-built so that users will feel comfortable using the system (Mai, et.al., 2013).
Another opportunity observed by the scholars of this study is to further align the SMART Help Desk System with FinTech to further improve user friendly and acceptance from the end-user point of view, i.e., those users who pertain to the contractors, suppliers etc., involved in the maintenance and construction projects within the Kingdom of Bahrain. As a result, the aim of this study is also to provide a review of literature to comprehend what is FinTech and how the Ministry of Works of Bahrain can indulge using this for improving the end-user acceptance of the SMART Help Desk System.
TAM (Technology Acceptance Model): TAM (Technology Acceptance Model) by Davis, (1989) has two beliefs; Perceived Usefulness (PU) and Perceived Ease-of-Use (PEOU) for user’s acceptance. Davis, (1989) defines PEOU as the measure to which the potential user expects the system to be effort-free. Thus, there is a positive link between Perceived Ease of Use (PEOU) and user friendly, which leads to customer’s satisfaction. Therefore, it is probable to determine a cause and effect relationship between User Friendly and User Satisfaction. TAM is particularly tailored for modeling users’ acceptance of information systems or technologies (Abdul Nasser & Prabhakar, 2017). TAM is renowned for applicability across various situations. TAM was primarily meant to explain the impending user’s behavioral intentions while using a technological innovation such as information systems (Bashir & Madhavaiah, 2014).