Acceptance to Use a Corporate Communication System

Acceptance to Use a Corporate Communication System

ABSTRACT

This aims to propose a model based on Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to investigate acceptance of Microsoft Lync as an office communication system and its’ adoption by the employees of IFS R&D International(Pvt) Ltd in Sri Lanka. The study includes identification of the appropriate variables and their application to the context of this study. The acceptance model was developed based on TAM theory.

1.      Introduction to the Company and its’ Business Process

     IFS(Industrial and Financial Systems) is a globally recognized leader in developing and delivering business software for enterprise resource planning (ERP) based in Sweden. It was founded in 1983 and currently has over 2,600 employees. IFS supports more than 2,200 customers worldwide from local offices and through partners in more than 60 countries. Since 1997, all the product development and customer support operations have been outsourced to Sri Lanka. Currently, the operations in Sri Lanka consist of Development and Support Services, Research and Development and Corporate Services. Research and Development (R&D) Department is engaged in developing the application and providing fixes to the application bugs reported by customers. The Development Services group collaborates with identified IFS consulting companies globally, performing customizations and second line customer support remotely from Sri Lanka. The group currently has around 10 teams dedicated to specific customer projects managed by consulting offices in the USA, UK, Netherlands, Scandinavia, Finland, Germany, Japan, Middle East and Africa. The Development Services teams mainly focus on fulfilling specific customer requirements that are not directly supported by core release(s) of IFS Applications. Also the teams analyze reported customer problems to identify causes and provide solutions with the support of R&D.

2.      Importance of communication in Current Business Process

     Once ERP application is implemented and gone live at customer’s site, any queries that arise will be forwarded to IFS through LCS (Life Cycle Support) system or by emails.  Business Analysts should then attend the customer inquiries and analyze them to see whether they are being core application bugs or caused due to any customization related problem. In case of a customization related matter, it is resolved within the Development Services department with the support of software engineers or else it is reported to R&D. In both instances, software engineers and Business Analysts at R&D should be guided to recreate the problem in their respective development environments in order to resolve the issue. In most of the times, communication with the regional consultants and product architects based in Sweden is necessary to proceed with the product solutions.  Therefore, both external and internal communications play a key role in successful delivery of customer solutions at IFS. The effective and faster internal communication enables to provide faster service to the customers. Earlier the communication was done mainly through emails and telephones, but it lacked the visual component, real-time desktop sharing and conferencing facility. Therefore, with the growth of the business, need for an effective internal communication system was raised in order to provide effective and efficient customer service.

3.      Microsoft Lync as an Internal Communication System

     Microsoft Lync is an enterprise communication software. Unlike Yahoo messenger, Windows Live Messenger, Skype, it contains a different feature set targeted toward corporate environments. Lync provides a user interface based on identity and presence that brings together voice, instant messaging (IM), audio, video, and web conferencing. According to Wikipedia 2014, features of MS Lync can be listed as follows,

·         Users can chat, share photos, files and join a web conference with voice audio and video.

·         Availability of contacts based on MS Outlook contacts stored in a Microsoft Exchange Server

·         Lync-Skype linkage enables to communicate directly with customers and partners on Skype

·         Users can organize polls and all participants can vote and see results using Polling List.

·         Desktop/ Windows applications sharing allows participants to see and simultaneously work on a Windows /specific application screen

·        A number of client types are available for MS Lync including mobile clients.

     Due to above capabilities, MS Lync has been identified as an effective communication system and Corporate Services Department wanted to test its’ acceptance among employees of several teams in the Development Services and R&D departments before being introduced throughout the company. Based on TAM model, the aim of this study is to gather user perceptions of the usefulness and ease of use of the system during its’ pilot implementation and to identify the relevant factors that support the acceptance or rejection of the system

4.      Discussion

    Based on the application of Technology Acceptance Model in this study, it appears that TAM offers a very practical model that can be used to predict the degree of actual use of a system which is unfamiliar to users after being introduced to it.

    In this particular study, users unfamiliar with MS Lync were expected to rate their perceptions of the MS Lync after being shown a demonstration of its capabilities through a pilot implementation. Users' initial perceptions of MS Lync's usefulness and ease of use were influential on changing their attitude and intentions to use it. Their intentions to use the system could accurately predict the actual use of the system as user behavioral intentions always act as a strong predictor in system usage according to TAM theory.  Gathering of results for the identified item scales under the selected constructs like perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, users’ attitude towards using, behavioral intentions  provided Corporate Services Department with implications for better implementing its’ internal communication system.

5.      Conclusion

It’s found that user perceptions of a system are formed very early and they can have a strong influence on whether users will actually use that system in the future. In this study, the pilot implementation of the system among few selected teams in the organization provided an opportunity to understand the initial user perceptions of the system and accordingly predict its’ acceptance before its’ actual organization wide implementation. With TAM, designers, developers, or purchasers can more accurately assess whether any system will be accepted by users by gathering their perceptions of a system's usefulness, ease of use and take required actions to encourage end user acceptance of that system. Therefore in conclusion, TAM can be considered as an effective means of assessing and predicting system acceptability.