Abstract:
The study was carried out to determine the extent of facilitation of commercial banking operations by computer-based office technologies in Ekiti State. Six research questions and five null hypotheses were developed and answered in line with what the study sought to find out. The study employed survey research design for data gathering through the use of a structured questionnaire. The population for the study was 300 bank employees made up of 90 commercial bank accountants and 210 commercial bank supervisors in the three senatorial districts. Due to manageable size of the population, the entire number of the bank employees were involved. Therefore, there was no sampling. A sixty structured banking operations questionnaire item was developed from the reviewed literature and used for data collection. Three experts validated the instrument. To obtain the reliability coefficients of the instrument, split-half technique and Cronbach Alpha method were employed; a Cronbach Alpha coefficient of 0.85 was obtained. The data collected were analyzed using frequency, mean and standard deviation to answer the research questions while t-test hypothesis was used for testing the null hypotheses. The findings of the study revealed that the computer-based office technologies have facilitated the commercial banking operations to a large extent in: current account, savings account, deposits and withdrawal, cheque clearing, credit facility and interbank in Ekiti State commercial banks. The findings of the t-test analysis on the five null hypotheses tested (summarily) showed that there were no significant differences in the mean ratings of the responses of the accountants and supervisors on the extent computer-based office technologies have facilitated commercial banking operations in current account, deposits and withdrawals, cheque clearing, credit facility and interbank operations in commercial banks in Ekiti State. Based on the findings, the study recommended that commercial banks should employ computer-based experts or specialists to handle most of the complex networking problems of internet connectivity in order to solve the frequent network failures and service delays; that professional development of commercial banks employees(accountants, managers and supervisors) must be a continuous process; that opportunity should be given to the employees of commercial banks by the management to upgrade their computer-based office technology skills through in-service training to enhance their versatility, efficiency and productivity and that the commercial banks in Ekiti State should come together to establish bankers’ training school. Candidates sent to the school from time to time to acquire required training and retraining for the accountants and supervisors. This, if implemented, will provide the trained manpower to the commercial banks in the State.
