Capacity/Scalability Problems
It is difficult to predict the usage of e-banking on an hourly or daily basis. These
‘scalability problems’ can give rise to a slowing down of the website, or even a website crash (temporary unavailability). This can cause many reputation problems and
financial damage. This was the case at Northern Rock Bank in UK. This bank ran
into credit problem when news spread that this bank was in trouble, thousands of
people rushed to the bank website to transfer their money elsewhere which resulted
in numerous technical problems in their e-banking system for many days. Some of
the ways of addressing this problem according to Seargeant (2000) are:
• Undertake market research to predict demand,
• Adopt systems with adequate capacity and scalability,
• Undertake proportionate advertising campaigns, and
• Ensure adequate staff coverage and develop a suitable business continuity plan
which not only helps coping with scalability problems but with other causes
of systems failure.