Pertanika 7(2), 101-113 (1984) •

A Survey on Computer Utilisation in Malaysia

MOHD. ZAIN B. MOHAMED and HAN CHUN KWONGDepartment of Management Stydies

Faculty of Resource Economics and AgribusinessUniversity Pertanian Malaysia

Serdang, Selangor.

Keywords: Computer utilisation; computer installations; computer applications; data processing; dataprocessing personel.

RINGKASAN

Jabatan-jabatan dan agensi-agensi kerajaan, syarikat-syarikat bank dan kewangan dan syarikat-syarikat pengedaran merupakan pengguna-pengguna komputer yang utama (54%) di Malaysia pada takun1982. Jumlah terbesar komputer-komputer digunakan untuk aplikasi-aplikasi rutin seperti lejar am, akaunbelum terima, akaun belum bayar, lembaran gaji, penyediaan invois, kawalan inventori, dan analisis danpenyediaan laporan jualan. Kebanyakan daripada komputer-komputer (57%) dikendalikan kurang daripada300 jam sebulan.

SUMMARY

Government departments and agencies, banking and finance, and distribution companies re-presented the major computer users (54%) in Malaysia ini 1982. Most of the computers were used forroutine applications such as general ledger, accounts receivable, accounts payable, payroll, invoicing,inventory control, and sales analysis and reporting. The majority of the computers (57%) were operatedfor less than 300 hours per month.

INTRODUCTION

The field of electronic data processing inMalaysia is relatively new. The first computer wasintroduced in 1965. The following year, twoothers organizations acquired computers. By1973, there was a total of 18 computers in thecountry. Throughout that period, i.e., from 1965to 1973, all the computers were owned and usedby the public sector. It was only in 1974 thatfour organizations in the private sector began usingcomputers. Since then, the number of computersused by both the public and the private sectorshas increased at a rapid rate. By 1980, there wasa total of 420 computer installations in thecountry. Out of these, 131 computers werebeing used by the public sector and 280 werebeing used by the private sector. As the pricesof computer hardware continue to dedine wecan expect that more organizations large andsmall, will begin to use computers of varioussizes and types in their information processingefforts and other activities.

As more and more organizations are acquiringcomputers, there are several issues that need to beaddressed. Firstly, how do the firms or organiza-tions use the computers that they buy. hire orlease? What sort of application softwares dothey have? What is the capacity available on eachcomputer and is this capacity being fully utilised?Do firms derive full benefit from their computers?Do users have the right kind of personnel tomake use of their computers;? Competition forqualified computer personnel has been and willcontinue to be stiff, especially for the posts ofsystems analyst and EDP manager, not onlybetween public and private sectors but alsobetween the organizations within the same sector.This paper will look into the current practices incomputer installations as well as attempt toprovide some answers to the various questionsposed above.

METHODOLOGY

The data were obtained through a mail

Keys to the authors' names: M.M. Zain and C.K. Han.

101

M.M. ZAIN AND C.K.HAN.

survey. A set of questionnaires was sent to asample of firms and governmental agencies whichhave computers. The sample was taken primarilyfrom the Asian Computer Year book 1981/82.Questionnaires were also mailed to other organi-zations known to be using computers but notlisted in the Year book. The first set of question-naires was mailed to 363 firms and government de-partments or agencies in the first week of May 1982.In the last week of June 1982 follow up question-naires were administered to the organizationswhich had not responded to the first mailing.

A total of 181 completed questionnaires werereceived. This represents a return rate of approxi-mately 50 per cent. The data from the question-naires were processed using the SPSS which wasrun on a Sperry Univax 1100/60 computer atUniversiti Pertanian Malaysia.

Since the data were collected from a mailsurvey, some weaknesses of this type of datagathering technique should be mentioned here.Some of the common weaknesses are as follows:

(i) It is quite common that a large percentage ofrespondents do not respond to mail surveyquestionnaires. In this study, 50% did notrespond.

(ii) The respondents may not understand someof the questions asked while other questionsmay require further explanation or elabora-tion. When this happens, he or she maychoose not to answer the question at all.

(iii) There is a lack of two way communicationand, as a result, the respondents normallydo not have the opportunity to ask forfurther elaboration concerning the questionsthat are unclear, ambiguous or vague to them.Hence some of the responses may not berelevant to the analysis.

(iv) The Asian Computer Year Book 1981/82,which the bulk of the sample organizationswere taken, may not be representative of theorganizations that have computers in thecountry. Many organizations may not belisted in this yearbook.

A SUMMARY OF FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS

Industry Type

The breakdown of the responding organiza-tions with respect to industry type is shown inTable 1. Twenty four per cent of the respon-

dents were from the public sector1 and 76 percent were from the private sector. Of the totalnumber of firms in the private sector, about 20per cent were in the distribution industry and an-other 20 per cent were in banking and finance.The next group of major users of computers wasin the business services industry followed by theengineering and construction industry whichrepresented 5.5 per cent and 5 per cent of thetotal respondents, respectively. Other users ofcomputer were agribusiness (3.3%), transport andstorage (2.8%), real estate (1.1%), petroleum andenergy (1.1%), education (1.1%), and other typesof industries (26%).

TABLE 1Industry Types

Types of industries No. of establishments %

Government Department/agencies 43 23.8Banking and Finance 28 15.5Distribution , 27 14.9Business services 10 5.5Engineering and construction 9 5.0Agribusiness 6 3.3Transport and storage 5 2.8Real estate 2 1.1Petroleum and energy 2 1.1Education 2 1.1Others 47 26

Total 181 100.0%

Size of Establishment

The size of establishments as categorised bythe number of employees is shown in Table 2.Thirty seven per cent of the establishments thatresponded had 150 employees or less. About 28per cent were firms or establishments that hadbetween 152 to 750 employees. Establishmentswhich had more than 750 employees representedapproximately 28 per cent of the total respon-dents.

Computer Brand Names

There were 38 different brands of computersbeing used by 171 of the organizations that respond-ed. Ten other respondents did not specify thebrand of computers they were using.

102

A SURVEY ON COMPUTER UTILISATION IN MALAYSIA

The survey revealed that only 7 brands ofcomputers comprised 80% of the computers beingused by these organizations.

TABLE 2Size of establishment according

to the number of employees

No. of employees No. of Relativeestablishments frequency

1-150151-750

above 750

Unspecified

6752

52

10

37.128.7

28.7

5.5

Total 181 100.0

Year of Installation

Table 3 indicates when the various computerswere installed and whether the organizations thatresponded had single, double or triple computerinstallations. About 68 per cent (172 out of 253)of the organizations surveyed had only a singleinstallation while 15.9 per cent had double in-stallations and 9.9% had triple installations. About7.5 per cent of the computers were installed priorto 1976. Only 4 per cent of the com-puters were installed in 1976. In terms of

percentage, an increasing number of computerswere installed in the years after 1976. The mostnumber of computers (63) or 24.9% were installedduring 1980.

Storage Capacity

The distribution of the size of the main me-mories of the computers is shown in Table 4.

Sixty one per cent of the organizationsindicated that their main memory sizes had 128Kor less of internal memories. Approximately 11%and 6% had internal memories of 129—25 6K and257-512%, respectively. Almost a quarter (22%)had memory sizes of 513K or more.

Looking at the future acquisitions planned by52 of the respondents, more «than half of them(5 7.7%) intend to acquire computers with memorysizes of 513K or more.

Table 5 shows the breakdown of sizesof the direct access storage capacity that werefound in 153 of the respondents surveyed.

There were 153 organizations that disclosedtheir direct access storage capacity available. Morethan half (62.5%) of the computers had a directaccess storage capacity of 100 M or less. A signi-ficant number of computers (18.8%) had directaccess storage of more than 500M.

As for future computer acquisitions, of the44 organizations that planned to acquire addi-

TABLE 3Year of Installation

Year

1967-75

1976

1977

1978

1979

1980

1981

1982

Total

FirstInstallation#

17

10

11

21

33

44

28

8

172

%

9.9

5.8

6.4

12.2

19.2

25.6

16.3

4.6

100.0

SecondInstallation#

2_

1

5

7

14

18

9

56

%

3.6

-

1.8

8.9

12.5

25.0

32.1

16.1

100.0

ThirdInstallation#

—

-

-

-

2

5

11

7

25

%

—

-

-

-8.0

20.0

44.0

28.0

100.0

Total#

19

10

12

26

42

63

57

24

253

%

7.5

4.0

4.7

10.3

16.6

24.9

22.5

9.5

100.0

103

MM. ZAIN AND C.K.HAN.

TABLE 4Distribution of Main (Internal) Memory Sizes

Size(kilobyte)

16 or less

17-64

65-128

129-256

257-512

Existing

Instal.No

#

15

38

51

10

513ormore37

Total 170

Drrect

AccessStorageCapacity(Megabyte^

(M)

Less than 5

5-10

1 1 - 25

26- 50

51-100

101-150

151-200

201-500

\

More than 5 00

Total

. 1

%

8.8

22.3

30.0

11.25.9

21.8

100.0

Existing

Instal.No. 1

# %

19 12.5

21 13.7

22 14.4

12 7.8

17 11.1

13 8.5

11 7.2

8 5.2

30 19.6

153 100.0

computer

Distal.No. 2

#

6

15

12

7

2

13

%

10.9

27.3

21.8

12.7

3.6

23.7

55 100.0

Instal.No.

#

_

8

6

2

4

4

24

3

%

—

33.3

25.0

8.3

16.7

16.7

100.0

Tota

#

21

61

69

28

16

54

249

TABLE 5

I

%

8.4

24.5

27.7

11.36.4

21.7

100.0

Future

FutureAcqui-sition

1

# %

1 2.0

4 8.2

5 10.2

3 6.1

6 12.3

30 61.2

49 100.0

*

Distribution of Direct Access storage Capacity

computers

Instal.No.

#

5

6

8

3

9

1

2

4

10

48

2

%

10.4

12.5

16.7

6.3

18.8

2.1

4.1

8.3

20.8

100.0

Instal.Nc

#

4

4

4

3

3

2

-

1

2

23

K 3

%

17.4

17.4

17.4

13.0

13.0

8.7

-

4.4

8.7

100.0

Total

#

28

31

34

18

29

16

13

13

42

224

%

12.5

13.8

15.2

8.0

13.0

7.1

5.8

5.8

18.8

100.0

Future

FutureAcqui-sition

I

# %

2 4.9

- -

2 4.9

4 9.8

4 9.8

2 4.9

3 7.3

7 17.1

17 41.5

41 100.0

acquisition

FutureAcqui-sition

2# %

1 33.3

1 33.3_ _

1 33.4

-

3 100.0

Tota

#

1

5

6

3

7

30

52

acquisition

FutureAcqui-sition

2# %

- -

— -

1 33.3

1 33.3

1 33.4

- —_ _

— —

- -

3 100.0

I

%

1.9

9.6

11.5

5.8

13.5

57.7

100.0

Total

#

2

-

3

5

5

2

3

7

17

44

%

4.6

-

6.8

11.4

11.4

4.5

6.8

15.9

38.6

100.0

tional direct access storage capacity, more than(54.5%) planned to increase their capacity bymore than 200 M.

Categories of Computers

As can be seen from Table 6, the most po-

pular categories of computers were mini compu-ters which comprised 58 per cent of the totalcomputers installed by the various establishments.Mainframes and micro computers, represented31 per cent and 11 per cent of the total computersspecified, respectively. The mini computers weremore common than the other two categories of

104

A SURVEY ON COMPUTER UTILISATION IN MALAYSIA

computers already installed or which were plannedto be installed by the various organisations. Thelower proportion of the mainframes as comparedto the minis and the micros is understandableconsidering their much higher prices. One probableexplanation as to why the micros representedthe smallest group of computers is due to theirrecent introduction into the Malaysian market,as compared to the other two categories of compu-ters.

Status of Ownership

The ownership status of the computers al-ready installed or planned to be installed by thevarious organizations is shown in Table 7. Ascan be seen, of the total existing computers thatwere being used by the various organizations,63.6 per cent were purchased, 33.6 per cent wereleased, and only 2.8 per cent were rented. As forthe planned future acuqisition of computers,43.5 per cent were to be purchased, 50 per cent

were to be leased and only 6.5 per cent were tobe rented. More future acquisitions of computerswere to be leased rather that purchased outright ascompared to those that were already existing.This could be that more and more organizationswere beginning to realize the benefits of leasingas compared to purchasing. Since the technologyof computers progresses very rapidly, leasingrather than purchasing will periodically enablethe organizations to replace their computerswith more advanced versions. Leasing also pro-vides an option for them to buy the computerat the end of the lease period, if they so wish.

Major Programming Languages

Overall, about 43 per cent of the users usedCOBOL as their main programming language.Other popular languages used were RPG (14%),FORTRAN (13%) and BASIC (12%). Among theless commonly used languages were PL1 (6%), andAssembler (4%0.

TABLE 6Distribution of Computers According to Categories

Category

Mainframe

Mini

Micro

Total

Purchase

Lease

Rent

Total

Instal.No. 1# %

49

94

17

160

30.6

58.8

10.6

100.0

Instal.No. 1

# %

100

67

6

173

57.8

38.7

3.5

100.0

Instal.No. 1# %

19

27,

6

52

36.6

51.9

11.5

100.0

Instal.No. 1# %

4

15

5

24

Instal.No. 2

# %

42

13

55

76.4

23.6

100.0

16.7

62.5

20.8

100.0

TotalExisting# %

72 30.8

136 58.1

26 11.1

234 100.0

TABLE 7Status of Ownership

Instal.No. 3

# %

19

5

1

25

76.0

20.0

4.0

100.0

TotalExisting

# . %

161 63.6

85 33.6

7 2.8

253 100.0

FutureInstal.# %

29 58.0

19 38.0

2 4.0

50 100.0

FutureInstal.

1# %

19 44.2

22 51.2

2 4.6

43 100.0

FutureInstal# %

3 100.0

3 100.0

FutureInstal

2# %

1 33.0

1 33.0

1 34.0

3 100.0

TotalFuture# %

29

22

2

53

54.7

41.5

3.8

100.0

TotalFuture

# %

20

23

3

46

43.5

50.0

6.5

100.0

105

M.M. ZAIN AND C.K.HAN.

Applications

Application programmes are categorized intofive components, namely, Accounting and Fin-ance, Administration and Personnel, Marketing,Production/Operation, and Other Types ofApplication.

a. Accounting and Finance Applications

Table 8 shows the various functions thatwere computerized.

Over 52 per cent of the users had computer-ised their general ledger processing. Other majorfunctional areas already computerised includedaccounts receivable (50%), accounts payable(35%), financial analysis (27%), budgeting (22%)

and responsibility accounting (17%). Popularapplications that are planned tor computerisationby the organizations currently employing manualapplications are budgeting (23%), general ledger(22%), accounts payable (21.5%), financial analy-sis (20%) and general ledger (13%).

b. Administration and Personnel Applications

Table 9 below shows the various applicationsunder this category.

Over 56 per cent of the users had computer-ised their payroll applications and another 17 percent planned to computerise them soon. Twoother popular functions that were computerisedor were being planned to be computerized werewage end salary analysis (31.5% existing and

TABLE 8Accounting and Finance Application

ApplicationComputerised# %

Planned#

General ledgerAccounts receivableAccounts payableFinancial analysisBudgetingResponsibility accountingFinancial accountingInvestment analysisCost and management accountingFinancial modellingOthers

959064

49

40

30

15

13

3

120

52.549.7

35.4

27.1

22.116.68.3

7.2

1.7

0.611.0

4024

39

36

4217

2

201

3

6

22.113.3

21.5

19.9

23.29.4

1.1

11.0

0.6

1.7

3.3

TABLE 9Administration and Personnel Applications

ApplicationComputerised# %

Planned#

PayrollWage and salary analysisPersonnel status reportFringe benefitPersonnel assignmentPersonnel recordManpower planningOthers

16457

57

4

21

-

8

56.431.5

31.5

2.2

1.1

0.6—

4.4

3126

39

2

3

1

1

3

17.114.4

21.5

1.11.7

0.6

0.6

1.7

106

A SURVEY ON COMPUTER UTILISATION IN MALAYSIA

14.4% planned) and Personnel Status Report(31.5% existing and 21.5% planned).

c. Marketing Applications

The types of computerised marketing appli-

cations are shown in Table 10 below. The mostpopular marketing applications were billing andinvoicing (40%), sales report (35%), and salesanalysis (34%). About 11 per cent of the usersplanned to computerise their sales forecastingand sales planning functions.

TABLE 10Marketing Applications

Application

Billing and invoicing

Sales report

Sales analysis

Sales forecasting

Sales planning

Sales order processing

Shipping/delivery report

Market research

Customer data

Others

Computerised

#

72

63

62

14

9

5

4

2

1

3

%

39.8

34.8

34.3

7.7

5.0

2.8

2.2

1.1

0.6

1.7

Planned

#

14

12

15

20

19

-

2

—

3

%

7.7

6.6

8.3

11.0

10.5

1.1—

—

1.7

TABLE 11Production/Operation Applications

Application Computerised

# %Planned

#

Inventory control/managenicm

Product/job costing

Purchase requisition report

Materials requirement planning

Production variance analysis

Production scheduling

Network analysis

Purchase order

Quality control report

Simulation

Linear programming

Project progress

Manufacturing

Production planning

Routine operations

CAM

Others

6124

19

10

14

12

8

8

76

5

4

3_ •

—

2

2

33.713.3

10.5

8.8

7.7

6.6

4.4

4.4

3.93.3

2.8

2.2

1.7—

—

1.1

1.1

2318

19

22

10

16

7

7

79

9

2

2

1

1

-

1

12.79.9

10.5

12.5

5.5

8.8

3.9

3.9

3.95.0

5.0

1.1

1.1

0.6

0,6

-

0.6

107

M.M. ZAIN ANDCK. HAN.

d. Production/Operation Applications

The list of this category of applications thathave been computerised is shown in Table 11.Inventory control/management represented thelargest computerised application under thiscategory with about 34 per cent of the organiza-tions already using it and about 13 per centplanning to use it. Other common computerisedapplications include product/job costing (13%existing, 10% planned), purchase requisition report(10.5% existing, 10.5% planned), material require-ment planning (19% existing, 12.5% planned),production variance analysis (8% existing, 5.5%planned) and production scheduling (7% existing,9% planned).

Other Application Types

Other types of applications that have alsobeen computerised are shown in Table 12 below.The main types of applicatiosn included underthis grouping were mainly data processing (43%existing, 37% planned) and banking (12%existing, 3% planned). Other common applications

outside these two categories were research andstatistics (8.3% existing, 0.6% planned) andscience, technology and engineering education(6.6% existing, 0.6% planned).

Location of Data Processing Function

The distribution of the location of the DPfunction is shown below.

Location No. of organisations %

DP/Computer Department 8 7

Accounting/ FinanceDepartment 58

Other Departments 31

Total 176

49.4%

33.0%

17.6%

100.0%

Almost half (49%) of the organizations sur-veryed had their own autonomous DP/computerdepartments. About 18 per cent of the organiza-tions located* their computers in a departmentother than DP/computer or Accounting/Finance.

TABLE 12

Other Typres of Applications

Application

Computer utilisation report

Processing/Job request

Computer scheduling

Research and statistics

Science, technology and engineering education

Computer budget

Share registration

Current and savings accounts

Other data processing

Loan and mortgages

Corporate modelling

Information services

Fixed deposits

Foreign exchange

Money market

Word processing

ATM

Others

Computerised

#

29

18

17

15

12

8

8

7

6

6

6

5

5

2

1

2

1

28

%

16.09.9

9.4

8.3

6.6

4.4

4.4

3.9

3.3

3.3

3.3

2.8

2.8

1.1

0.6

1.1

0.6

15.5

Planned

#

23

18

18

1

1

12

%

12,9

9.9

9.9

0.6

0.6

6.6

1 0 6_

1

3

147

2

14_

2

11

_

0.6

1.7

7.7

3.9

, 1.17.7

—

1.1_

6.1

108

A SURVEY ON COMPUTER UTILISATION IN MALAYSIA

Hours of Operation

The monthly hours of computer operationis shown in Table 13.

Sixty nine per cent of th$ computers wereoperated for less than 300 wfcil (Clock hours permonth. Only about nine pgr cent were operatedfor more than 500 wall #ock hours From thissurvey it was also foun'd that the computersthat were operated for 200 or less per monthin terms of wall clocks hours were of the minior the micro systems, compared to the mainframe.In terms of CPU hours, about 75 per cent of thecomputers were used for 300 hours or less permonth. However, almost 49 per cent of the organi-zations did not specify the CPU operating timefor their computers. This phenomenon may becaused by their inability to measure the exactCPU operating time for their installations.

The distribution ofper day was as follows:

computer work shift

One

Two

Three

102 (60.4%)47 (27.8%)

20 (11.8%)

Number of shifts Number of organizations

Of the 169 organizations responding to this ques-tion, 102 (60%) organizations operated theirinstallations on a one-shift per day basis;47 (27.8%) organizations on a two-shift basis and20 (11.8%) organisations on a three-shift basis.

Organizations having External Users

The break down of the organizations thatshared their installations with external users isgiven below:

No. of external users No. of organizations %

Less than 10

10-50

100 and above

Not specified

18

2

2

8

~30~

60.0

6.7

6.7

26.6

100.0

Only 30 (16.6%) respondents stated thatthey provided computer services to externalusers. Of the total, 18 (60%) indicated theyhad less than ten external users. A rather smallpercentage (13.4%) of the specified organizationshad more than 10 external users.

From Table 14, we can see that, based on the181 firms surveyed, a total of 3029 employeesof various types was found in the organizationsthat have computers.

The survey revealed that in the next five-year period (1983-87), more lower level UPpersonnel would be needed than higher levelpersonnel. The data also indicate that more lowerlevel staff, as terminal operators and supervisors,would be needed than higher level, managementstaff. This is generally the case in any organization.

TABLE 13Average Monthly Operating Times

Hours permonth

Operating times

Wall clock# %

CPU

100 or less100-200201-300301-400401-500501 and above

554939211214

10.0

32.7

26.5

14.08.09.3

213818853

20.737.617.87.95.03.0

Total 150 100.0 101 100.0

109

M.M. ZAIN AND CK. HAN.

DP managerSystems programmerSystems analystProgrammerSupervisorTerminal operatorOther operator

TABLE 14Current and

Currentnumberemployed#

11168

357

475216

1212590

Projected ManpowerRequirements

%

3.72.2

11.815.7

7.1

40.019.5

Number oforganizationsresponding

10429

10211692

119147

Average additional numberrequired per organizationfor the period 1983-87

1.01.31.82.52.13.62.0

Total 3,029 100.0

In the survey the respondents were askedwhether they would expect any difficulty inrecruiting their projected DP manpower needs.In responding to the question, 74 (40.9%) respon-dents indicated that they would expect difficultyin the recruitment while 90 (49.7%) respondentsexpected not to experience any difficulty at all.Seventeen (9.4%) respondents did not respondto the question.

Feasibility Study before Acquiring Computers

A total of 143 (79%) of the organisationsthat responded carried out feasibility studiesbefore deciding on acquiring their computers.The breakdown of organizations that conductedfeasibility studies for computer installation is asfollows:

Inhouse EDP committee

External consulting firm

Personnel from the

No. ofrespondents

42

30

organization's headquarters 23

EDP Department

Others20

28

Percentage

29.4

20.9

16.1

14.0

19.6

Total 143 100.0

Reporting Relationships of Systems Officers

A total of 73 (40%) of the most senior systemsofficers/DP managers in these organisations re-ported directly to their chief executive officers

(CEO). The break down of the systems officerswho did not report directly to their CEO is shownin Table 15. ,

TABLE 15Reporting relationships of the

Data Processing Heads of Organisations who didnot report directly to the Chief Executive Officer

(CEO)

No. of levelsbelow the CEO

No. ofDP Head

One

Two

Three

51 (75%)

13 (19%)

4 (6%)

As indicated in the Table, 75% of the DPheads in responding organisations reported to asenior executive who was one level below theCEO. Thirteen (19%) and 4 (6%) of them reportedto the senior executive who was two and threelevels below the CEO, respectively.

Staffing, Staff Training and Turnover

The sources of the responding organisationsDP professionals are shown in Table 16.

From the table we can see that there is ahigher ratio of DP managers promoted fromwithin the organization than those recruited fromoutside organizations or as fresh graduates. How-ever, more systems analysts and systems program-mers are recruited as fresh graduates. With the

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A SURVEY ON COMPUTER UTILISATION IN MALAYSIA

TABLE 16Source of Data processing professionals

Average number of professionalsper organization*

DP manager

Systems Programmer

Systems Analyst

Programmer

Promoted

1.3 (46)

1.8 (18)

2.2 [40)

2.4 (59)

External

1.0 (44)

1.3

1.7

3.4

( 6)

(50)

(50)

Graduate

1.0 ( 4)

2.0 (12)

3.5 (50)

2.1 (50)

*The number within the parenthesis indicates the relevant number of responding organizations.

exception of the programmers, the personnelrecruited from outside organizations representthe smallest group of professionals among theresponding organizations. A plausible reasonfor this phenomenon is that it is probably cheaperfor organizations to train their own people inthese jobs than to recruit them from outsideorganizations. Internal training also has theadvantage of having staff who are familiar withthe operations of the organization.

One hundred and fourteen of the respondingorganizations stated that they provided sometraining programmes for their DP staff while 57organizations did not provide any staff trainingat all. Some organizations also provided trainingprogrammes to their own DP staff or users aswell as other external DP professionals or users.The breakdown of the number of the variouspersonnel from the various organizations surveyedwho had undergone some training programmeis shown in Table 17.

The table reveals that Programmers aregiven training by their own organizations (79out of 114 organizations or 69%), more so thanany of the DP professional posts listed. Otherpopular appointments where training is given by anumber of the organizations are Systems Analysts49 organizations or 43%), DP/Computer manager(41 organizations or 36%) and Systems pro-grammers (24 organizations or 21%). The tablealso shows that though only a few organizationsprovide training to external personnel, the pro-portion of external staff trained is bigger thanthat of internal staff.

Table 18 shows the number of personnelaccording to job types who left the organizationwithin the last 5-year period.

A higher proportion of those who left were fromthe lower professional hierarchy than those inthe higher level as can be seen in the table. Itshould also be noted that a higher proportion ofthose who left were in the organization for less

TABLE 17

Number of Personnel Trained

Post No. of personnel trained*Own staff External

Programmer

Systems analyst

DP/Computer Manager

Systems programmer

286 (79)

221 (49)

67 (41)

47 (24)

291 (151)

135 ( 9)

47 ( 6)

100 ( 2)

Total 621 573

*The figure within the parenthesis indicates the relevant number of responding organizations.

I l l

M.M. ZAIN ANDCK. HAN.

TABLE 18Breakdown of staff turnover in the

last 5 Years

Appointment

DP ManagerSystems ProgrammerSystems AnalystProgrammer

No.who

of staffleft the

organization

30

14

107

132

(27)(19)(53)(63)

2

4

8

66

93

Breakdown

service

years

( 3)

( 5)(38)(48)

witn

2 -

14

5

43

43

by length of

the organization

- 5 years

112)

( 5)(25)(25)

5

13

e

6

18

*

years(13;

( 2)( 4)( 6)

•The number within parenthesis indicates the relevant number of responding organizations.

than two years compared to those who wereemployed for more than two years. This pheno-menon could be the result of job-hopping ofyounger and lower-level executives who were inconstant search of better opportunities andsalaries especially in the DP/computer industrywhere the demand for qualified DP professionals isstill very high.

CONCLUSION

According to the findings of this study, otherthan the government, the firms in the banking,finance and distribution industries were the mainusers of computers in Malaysia. Sixty-six per centof the organizations employed 750 or less dataprocessing employees. Even though there weremore than 30 brands of computers being used,only seven brands comprised 80 per cent of thetotal. Most of the computers (84%) were installedin or after 1978. About 61 per cent of the com-puters had memory sizes of 128 kilobytes orless. Only 22 per cent had memory sizes of 513kilobytes or more. Fifty per cent of the organi-zations had direct access storage capacities of50 megabytes or less. The most popular categoryof computers were mini computers which com-prised 58% of the total. Second in rank weremainframes (31%); third were micro computers(11%). Outright purchase (64%) and lease (34%)seem to be the most popular ways of acquiringcomputers in the past. However, this trend seemsto be changing. More organizations plan to leaserather than purchase their computers in the fu-ture. Renting seems to be an unpopular modeof acquiring computers. The most commoncomputer language found was COBOL (43%).

In the area of accounting and finance, themost common types of computerised applications

were general ledger and accounts receivable;they were found in more than 50 per cent of theorganizations surveyed. Payroll (56%) was themost common computerized application used inthe area of administration and personnel. Billingand invoicing, sales reporting, and sales analysiswere the more common computerised applicationsin the area of marketing; 33 per cent of the totalorganizations used each of these types of appli-cations. Only inventing control/management wasthe more commonly used computerised applicat-tion in the area of production or operationmanagements; about 34 per cent of the organi-zations stated that they used these applications.

About half (49%) of the computers werelocated in autonomous DP/computer depart-ments in the responding organizations. The ma-jority (69%) of the computers were operated for300 wall clock hours or less per month. Sixtyper cent of the computers were operated on asingle shift basis, 28 per cent on a 2-shift and 12per cent on a 3-shift basis. Only 17 per cent ofthe responding organizations shared their compu-ters with users outside their organizations. Therewas a total of 3,029 employees employed bythe 181 organizations surveyed. Out of these,the most common employments were DP/com-puter managers, systems analysts, programmersand operators. The types of jobs projected tobe most in demand until 1987 were operators,programmers and systems analysts.

Most of the organizations (79%) surveyed,carried out feasibility studies before deciding toacquire their computers; the majority (7 5%)of the most senior systems officers or DP managersof these organisations reported directly to theirchief executive officers. More DP managers werepromoted from within the organizations as

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A SURVEY ON COMPUTER UTILISATION IN MALAYSIA

opposed to those recruited from other organi-zations or from Universities. More systems pro-grammers and systems analysts, however, wererecruited from among University graduates ratherthan from within the organization or from otherorganizations. Only programmers were moreoften recruited from other organizations ratherthan from the two other sources mentioned.Training within the organization was most oftengiven to programmers and systems analysts.The turnover rate for programmers and systemsanalysts was higher than for DP managers andSystems programmers. Also, the rate was higherfor those who had worked with the organiza-tions for 2 years or less as opposed to those whohad worked for a longer period.

According to Jasimuz Zaman and A.N.Waliullah, a computer should be used 24 hoursa day at all times. Using a 300-day year and allow-ing a 10 per cent down time, a computer shouldbe in operation for 540 hours per month. Basedon the survey result, only 10% of the respond-ing organizations used their computers more than500 hours per month. Therefore, based on thestated standard, most of the computers in thiscountry were underutilised. However, consi-dering that the usage of computers in Malaysiais a relatively recent phenomenon and that about42 per cent of the users used their computers formore than 200 hours per month, underutilisationis not a major problem. Perhaps, the optimumWesternized standard of operation of computersfor 24 hours per day is too high a standard forMalaysia at this time. Perhaps an alternativestandard for Malaysia should be established.Nonetheless, it can be expected that mainframesshould be used at a higher rate than the mini/micro systems. A lower useage rate for the minr/micro systems relative to the mainframes is desi-rable in terms of costs and maintenance.

Judging from the observation that more andmore organizations bought computers especiallyin the years after 1977 and also that more organi-zations plan to buy computers in the future,we can say that computers in Malaysia are in-creasingly well-accepted. Nevertheless, it is noteasy to measure whether the various organizationsderived full benefits from their computers. Bylooking at the number of applications the organi-zation plan to purchase or develop, especiallysuch as standard programmes as general ledgerand inventory management, we can say that theorganizations are deriving considerable benefitsfrom their computers. The demand for computerpersonnel in the future will remain high especiallyfor systems analysts, programmers, supervisorsand operators.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors would like to express their gra-titude to Encik Belkhani bin Rafie for his helpin part of the processing of the data collected.

REFERENCES

C.F. LAU, (1980): Computer Technology in Malaysia.Bertia Komputer, 1(3): 6-14.

MAMPU (1979): Survey on Current Status of ComputerUsage in Federal Government Agencies - 1979,Prime Minister's Department, Malaysia.

THURSTON, P.H. (1962): Who should Control Informa-tion Systems? Harvard Business Review, November-December, 1962.

ZAMAN. J. and WALIULLAH, A.N. (1981): Use ofComputers in Public Sector in Bangladesh, A paperpresented at the International Conference on Com-puting for Development, Asian Institute of Techno-logy, Bankok 25-28 August, 1981.

(Received 7 December 1983)

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