Analysis of IT Management Issues in a Merged Online University

This report analyzes the IT management challenges faced by a newly merged online university, World University, which aims to provide world-class education through an entirely online platform. The report delves into various IT issues, including website interactivity, the advantages and disadvantages of using a single website, issues with mobile applications, and the integration of an ERP system. It examines the impact of these issues on student experience, business operations, and student loyalty programs. The report highlights the importance of addressing these challenges to ensure the university's success in attracting and retaining students, and maximizing its business profit. The report covers topics such as website management, geo-targeting, content duplication, and the challenges of developing and maintaining a mobile application across different platforms. The report also touches upon the difficulties of tracking loyal students and the importance of providing incentives for student referrals.

Running head: IT MANAGEMENT ISSUES
IT MANAGEMENT ISSUES
Critique in Systems & Technology

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
A university of various private education institution have decided to merge together to
form a world class university and will be entirely online. Lecturers will be able to teach and
interact with students on the e-platform. The institutions have decided to merge so as to offer
world class education to students worldwide. The university will create website where every the
management, lecturers, and students will have different portals to interact on the platform. The
interactive web platform that is intended to provide by new university will increase user’s traffic
toward their website, and this increases the business of university. The university also has tried
to adopt with the improvement of technology by developing a mobile application, and this is still
going to draw attention from students who are more with mobile technology.
For improvement of new World University, the university has managed to improve IT
infrastructures especially by upgrading their new website that is developed centrally for all
merged institutions and even managed mobile technologies by making their learning classes
available within the mobile application. The more concern with the interactivity of developed
website is given to improve the experience of students, who visit the site of University.

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Table of Contents
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.............................................................................................................1
Table of Contents......................................................................................................................2
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
IT Management Issues.....................................................................................................................4
Issue with interactivity of website................................................................................................4
Advantages of using single webSITE..........................................................................................5
Easy management of site...........................................................................................................5
Cost of building and managing website is reduced...................................................................5
Less time to manage issues within website...............................................................................5
Fewer chances of contents duplicate.........................................................................................5
Easier for cross-selling of courses from university...................................................................6
Higher ranking of page in SERP (search engine result page)...................................................6
Disadvantages of using single website.........................................................................................6
University is unable to get students with geo-target.................................................................6
For site to go down, university loses al the business................................................................7
Issues with interactivity of website...........................................................................................7
Issues with tracking loyal students............................................................................................7
Issue with mobile application...................................................................................................8
Various platforms available......................................................................................................8
Difficult and hidden features.....................................................................................................8
Issues with integrated ERP..............................................................................................................9
Issues with Web 4.0 level..............................................................................................................10
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................10
RECOMMENDATIONS...............................................................................................................11
Reference List................................................................................................................................12

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Introduction
A university of various private education institution have decided to merge together to
form a world class university and will be entirely online. Lecturers will be able to teach and
interact with students on the e-platform. The institutions have decided to merge so as to offer
world class education to students worldwide. The new university named Wold University has
tried to include a maximum number of students with the ability to allow them to graduate in the
country of choice thus increasing learning flexibility significantly. Besides their large number of
tutors worldwide, the range of courses intended to be offered by the university will also increase.
They have decided to provide preconfigured laptops and e-books for the students because they
are part of the requirements for online learning. The laptops will be loaded with the required
software and distributed to the students who have enrolled all over the world.
In addition to the online infrastructure that is managed to address the different needs of
the students, the university also will include prominent features regarding the technical aspects of
the university. The university will create website where every the management, lecturers, and
students will have different portals to interact on the platform. The interactive web platform that
is intended to provide by new university will increase user’s traffic toward their website, and this
increases the business of university. The university also has tried to adopt with the improvement
of technology by developing a mobile application, and this is still going to draw attention from
students who are more with mobile technology. The merged World University is trying to use a
single platform, for accessing the website and provide joint service for online students too. The
university will use a single website to provide service (Bahrami et al., 2012).

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IT Management Issues
For improvement of new World University, the university has managed to improve IT
infrastructures especially by upgrading their new website that is developed centrally for all
merged institutions and even managed mobile technologies by making their learning classes
available within the mobile application. The more concern with the interactivity of developed
website is given to improve the experience of students, who visit the site of University.
The university is still more interested in deploying their business for large student base
and increasing their business profit, with student loyalty scheme. The loyal students who refer
new students with fee credit will be rewarded depending on the course they pick. The university
has planned to make the fee fair to their students. However, the university has issued notice
about the fee may vary depending upon course taken and the rate of student enrolment.
The institutions have seen to be upgraded and able to provide significant online learning
resources and facilities for the students. However, the implementation of state plans is
challenging for the university to carry on. This causes the university to deal with several
challenges especially with the implementation of IT infrastructure of the university. The
discussion of issues that are raised with managing IT issues of the university is covered below.
Issue with interactivity of website
The university’s intention to manage the single website for all merged institutions is seen
as to have a mixed effect on learning experience (Hisham, 2015), having both advantages and
disadvantages for the university running a single website for different branches of the university.

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Advantages of using single Website
Easy management of site
With only one site for the university to maintain and organise, the university can do work
related to a website without spending more time and effort. With this university has sufficient
time to analyse and plan other more critical issues related to the learning processes and which
ultimately increases the chance of the university to maximise profit. Thus, managing single
website for all different branches is seen with resources needed to manage the site.
Cost of building and managing website is reduced
With development and maintenance of website, the university must register the website
and even host the website using a reliable hosting company that increases the uptime of
university’s website. Hence, the cost related to registering the website and hosting it is cheaper
compared to hosting multiple websites which is expensive enough for the university to pay and
thus using single website is beneficial especially with starting a university (Porssa and
Mirzazadeh, 2016).
Less time to manage issues within website
With just one website to manage, the university can focus on issues related to only one
site and which creates the site up to date with problems faced and students can gain maximum
supportive website for choosing the course that they would like to enrol.
Fewer chances of contents duplicate
When a university needs to update all the features and service provided by the university
using several sites managed by the university, there will be higher chances that contents
uploaded by the university to the site could be duplicated and these make no significant impact
on improving business profit and useability. However, the resources are misused. This show

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with single site maintained by university drastically reduces this problem associated with
creating duplicate contents in university’s website.
Easier for cross-selling of courses from university
The students who are willing to use the service from the university do not have to search
different sites for choosing and selecting courses from the university; this increases the ability of
university’s single website to sell more services. Thus the idea to use the single website for
different institutions of the university is seen wiser approach with a business perspective.
Higher ranking of page in SERP (search engine result page)
The merged institutions to form one university can have a higher rank in SERP, than
when the university intends to use different websites with different branches of the university.
This higher ranking of university’s website is always beneficial for a university with business
profit, for a large university of students can get informed about the university, and its service and
more people are likely to use service from the university itself. With this issue, the university’s
motive to maximise profit is seen to be accomplished.
Disadvantages of using single website
University is unable to get students with geo-target
By university’s plan to adopt a single website for business having advantages to carry and
with the addition to adding this some distinct disadvantages are needed to handle by any
university. Similarly, merged university cannot properly address the service to different users
who are distributed at the different geographical location, and this drastically reduces the clients
visiting the website of the university and this is seen as a disadvantage for university’s intended
policy to maximise profit.

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For site to go down, university loses al the business
With the university having only one site to carry out business plans and activities, this
situation can be disappointing when university’s site goes down due to technical issues within
hosting university and bugs within a website. When this situation arises, all the learning
operations of a university can go down, and university should experience severe loss. Thus this
issue is seen a disadvantage for the university when using single website.
Issues with interactivity of website
The university needs to include different features within their website about the courses
available to students, the available range of service use and management of user’s login page and
storage and website with interactive interface could only be maintained with internet version of
2.0 (Cossío-Silva et al., 2016). A device that does not support this version cannot use the
available interactive user interface of university’s website. Besides this university need a
professional programmer to develop a website for university and database maintenance of the
university. The university can have an issue with handling of this process of website
development, hosting and regularly maintaining.
Issues with tracking loyal students
The university has planned to give extra facilities to loyal students who are constantly
referring new students to the university. These are real students of the university who could be
trusted by university thus university should also provide an incentive for those loyal students
who frequently refer new customers. The university should identify true loyal students of
university and provide them deserving facilities. To do this task could be a challenging task for
university and university could take help of professionals who can manage and handle database
associated with the university and track loyal students by viewing the name associated with a

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particular student and its frequency being entered to the website. This could help the university
to deal with the issue of tracking loyal students.
Issue with mobile application
With university’s approach to reaching mobile users with their university’s business
policy by developing a mobile application is seen a positive step toward maximising university’s
profit margin, the, however, the university needs to struggle with some issues that come under
deployment of mobile application(Gerber, 2016.).
Various platforms available
The university should be able to deal with various platforms that are possible on the
mobile platform. Just focusing on one particular platform of OS, students who are using different
platform cannot be covered with university’s business policy (Picón-Berjoyo et al., 2016).
Moreover, managing mobile application with different platform requires programmers who are
proficient on various platforms, and this is challenging task for the university to hire those
professional.
Difficult and hidden features
Several mobile applications and features that are launched to cover the complex need of
university can be difficult to find out features and functionalities supported by the particular
application. This makes university’s services hidden and obscured to the majority of users and
university cannot be successful with providing service to a larger group of users. Moreover, it is
challenging for the university to deal with their business policy.

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Issues with integrated ERP
ERP (Enterprise resource planning) is business activities management software that
provides business owners with the ability to manage and integrate different applications
associated with business operations. This software adds reliability integrity associated with
technology, applications and human resources. The implementation of this ERP tool can manage
a different component of the University and owners can have less trouble handling business
plans. Along with this facility, university management must confront challenges with
implementation and handling of the tool (Wailgum, 2017).
The university having web services enabled with different features enabled within itself,
there will be a significant challenge with University for integrating various business process and
web browsers along with ERP tool and without proper rapport existing in between these
components, business activity associated with University.
The basic requirement of selection of ERP tool should be known at prior than university
chooses to implement, without this prior knowledge of essence the tool cannot be effective with
its purpose with the university. With a motive to increase the productivity and business value
owners of University should make a critical analysis of the present requirement of the university
and then only decide to implement the tool.
With ERP software implemented to business policy previously adopted, business
philosophy can take significant change, and this may reduce the interest of partners involved
within the business. The owner must be able to manage this scenario with proper justification of
software’s advantages regarding operation speed and accuracy of work carried on the business. A

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proper encouragement for some members of the university will always be challenging issue with
the owners of merged institutions.
Technological issues can always come with business owners when they must be dealing
with new application thus university must be able to deal with this challenge. The process can be
challenging to deal, and owners must confront it.
Issues with Web 4.0 level
The web 4.0 level of the web is an ultra-intelligent electronic agent that is proposed
experience for internet users with an ultimate level of interactivity present with internet use and
also the possibility of intelligent. This web version of the system can revolutionise whole internet
world and change experience of users internet use. With University being able to implement this
version of the web platform, the interactivity and features available to students of University are
increased to a significant level (Fowler and Rodd, 2016). Users visiting could be easily be
recognised by an intelligent feature within web platform, and the site could easily manage loyal
students of the university without any trouble of handling database of students.
This version of the web is just in its development phase and has not been yet released, but the
whole experience of internet use of user can be changed once significantly it is released.
Conclusion
The university’s motive to maximise the profit by merging different learning istitutions is
seen to face several issues on completion of intended motive. Especially, IT features intended to
upgrade my university is seen to face several issues and these issues are dealt with consideration
of advantages and disadvantages and possible mitigation steps that university can rely upon.

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RECOMMENDATIONS
The university to implement a system that is scalable and can support future additions of
new functions. Secondly, it should have a parallel system that ensures that in case the website
experiences technical failures, the learning process can still go on. Thirdly, ensure that security
policies are updated every day to ensure that student and lecturer details are private and
confidential from unauthorized third parties.

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Cossío-Silva, F., Revilla-Camacho, M., Vázquez, M. and Palacios-Florencio, B. (2016). Value
co-creation and student loyalty. Journal of Business Research. [Online]. 69(5),pp.1621–
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the-ultra-intelligent-electronic-agent-is-coming.
Gerber, S. (2016). The 8 most overlooked mobile app usability issues (and how to fix them).
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usability-issues/#aS1eKYBabaqm.
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multiple-websites-for-seo/.
Picón-Berjoyo, A., Ruiz-Moreno, C. and Castro, I. (2016). A mediating and multiuniversity
analysis of student loyalty. European Management Journal. [Online]. 34(6),pp.701–713.

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[Accessed 8 May 2018]. Available from:
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