IT Management Issues: World University Business Enhancement Report

This report delves into the IT management issues faced by World University, an online education provider. The case study examines four key decisions made by the university's senior management. These include the implementation of a customer loyalty program, providing laptops to students, and recommendations for enhancing their business model through compliance and risk management. The report also highlights the crucial role of social media in promoting the university's business model, detailing its impact on student interaction, responsiveness, marketing, and student acquisition. Several advantages of social media are discussed, along with recommendations for improving the university's IT infrastructure and business processes, emphasizing the need for risk management and adherence to regulations. This report provides a comprehensive overview of IT management challenges and opportunities within the context of an online educational institution.

Running head: IT MANAGEMENT ISSUES
IT Management Issues
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note:

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Discussion..................................................................................................................................2
Case Study..............................................................................................................................2
Various Decisions Taken Senior Management......................................................................3
Two Business Process for Enhancement of Business Model.................................................3
Role of Social Media for Promotion of Business Model.......................................................4
Recommendations......................................................................................................................7
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................8
References................................................................................................................................10

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Introduction
Information technology or IT is the use of several computers or systems to
subsequently store, retrieve, transmit or manipulate data or information in the significant
context of a business or enterprise (Dahlstrom, Walker & Dziuban, 2013). This information
technology can be termed as a subset of information and communication technology or ICT.
All of those devices, which are properly utilized for the purpose of all type of operations of
information, are collectively known as devices of information technology. Each and every
such information technology device could be significantly used by the organizations to
properly execute or complete any data operation or business process. The entire management
of any type of data or information within any organization is easily done only if that
organization has implemented information technology (Galegher, Kraut & Egido, 2014).
Proper management of information technology is the particular discipline or rule by which all
the resources of IT within an organization is controlled or managed according to priorities or
requirements.
This following report is outlining the popular World University case study. The
management of the university has subsequently undertaken four important decisions within
their business. All of these four decisions are associated with information technology. This
business report has highlighted the entire case study with relevant details. Two business
processes are recommended to the organization and even the role of social media is provided
for enhancing the business model.

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Discussion
Case Study
World University is a university that is providing various online courses to their
student (Bardhan & Thouin, 2013). It is the collection of few popular universities worldwide
and the lecturers are from those popular universities. The students can take their classes from
any corner of the world and thus would have the ability to select their own choice of
university. The interactions would be done online.
Various Decisions Taken Senior Management
The senior management of World University has undertaken four distinct decisions
for their business. The very first decision is the incorporation of customer loyalty scheme,
called Study Together for the students who will be referring another student to the university
(Kellermann & Jones, 2013). It would be a fixed credit fee and would be given either by
credit card or PayPal. Hence, the students would be happier with the entire process.
Moreover, the applications would be extremely faster than in any other university.
The next decision taken by World University is to provide laptops to each and every
student. The students need not buy E-books or laptops separately. The university will be
providing a pre configured laptop with all of their required software within it (Holtshouse,
2013). The cost will be incurred within the course fees and thus students cannot avoid this
facility. This would be helpful for them and their education.
Two Business Process for Enhancement of Business Model
The two business processes for the enhancement of business model are given below:
i) Compliance: The most significant business process which must be incorporated in
the business model of this World University is the incorporation of compliance. Compliance

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solely refers to all types of legal checking or safety audit. Compliance is the type of
certification or confirmation, which an organization uses for the purpose of fulfilling each
and every requirement of their specified standards, rules, legislations and regulations (Lloyd,
2017). All of these standards or laws are mandatory and hence must be strictly followed by
the organizational employees or students. World University should incorporate the
compliance business process for the purpose of enhancing their business model and thus
reducing the chances of illegal activities or illegal actions in their business. The most
important advantage is that the students would be feeling safe and secured with this.
ii) Risks Management: The next significant business process to enhance the business
model of this particular World University is the proper incorporation of the process of risk
management (Schwalbe, 2015). This process is defined as a process to identify, calculate and
lastly prioritize several significant risks that is being followed by the proper resource
application to simply minimize as well as control any type of unfortunate event. This would
eventually maximize all the situational opportunities. The major goal of the process of risk
management is to assure the fact that uncertainty is not at all deflecting on the organizational
objectives and goals (Laudon & Laudon, 2015). Since, this typical organization of World
University is one of the newest universities; risk management process is vital for them. There
are various advantages of risk management process.
These above-mentioned two significant business processes would be vital for the
World University to successfully enhance their basic business model. The proper
incorporation of all these business processes will be helping World University in achieving
their business goals and objectives.

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Role of Social Media for Promotion of Business Model
Social media is the particular computer oriented technology that is responsible for
facilitating sharing and even creation of any data or information, interests of careers, similar
ideologies, several expression forms and many more within the virtualized communication or
virtualized networks (Schnoll, 2015). Providing modes for communications are the most
significant feature of this social media platform. All the users are benefitted for this
technology.
World University is a group of various private universities that are located worldwide.
This particular university is the online university providing online courses to all of its
students (Wagner, Beimborn & Weitzel, 2014). The classes are taken by the respective
lectures from any part of the world. There is no restriction for places in the organization.
Since, this typical organization of World University is one of the newest universities;
marketing should be kept on first priority for them. Social media is responsible for providing
maximum utility to the marketing of any organization. Thus, the platform of social media
should be undertaken by the World University for the sole purpose of advertising or
marketing their university worldwide to the all the available students. The business model of
World University is properly promoted with the help of social media platform (Sun &
Jeyaraj, 2013). There are various important roles of social media in any business. These roles
of social media are given below:
i) Interaction with the Target Audience: The most significant advantage of the social
media is that it helps in the perfect interaction of the target audiences or target market
(Luftman et al., 2013). The target audiences in this particular case are the various students
worldwide, who are willing to take admissions in the World University. Each and every
student of this university will be having a specific ability for easily commenting as well as
providing important feedbacks to the services of the university within their official and

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registered social media page. After getting the various responses or feedbacks from the
students, this university can change their business processes and thus can bring more
popularity for the students (Jones et al., 2014). Apart from this, due to the constant
interactions, the university will also be able to solve all the problems or issues for the
students. Thus, the needs of the students are eventually addressed,
ii) Improvement in Responsiveness: The next significant advantage of the social
media is that it helps to improve the responsiveness of the organization. The platform of
social media is solely used to make the significant procedure of providing or receiving
various feedbacks (Bloom et al., 2014). These feedbacks are extremely less than all the other
feedbacks. When any student is suffering through any kind of issue or problem about the
various services of World University, he or she share this problem on the platform of social
media with the hope of getting justice. The university does not have to search the details of
the student; social media will be doing that properly.
iii) Position of Market and Competition: Any business becomes successful only
when they are aware of the competition of their markets and know the position of the market.
Social media is responsible for demonstrating a proper position or structure of the business
within the market and also the fact that how well all the competitors of this organization are
performing in the market (Bilbao-Osorio, Dutta & Lanvin, 2013). Since, this typical
organization of World University is one of the newest universities; it comprises of several
important competitors within the market. This particular organization should have the
significant ideology about all the businesses.
iv) Efficient and Effective Marketing: The fourth advantage or role of social media
within the organization of World University is the efficient as well as effective marketing
(Galegher, Kraut & Egido, 2014). This type of platform helps to generate the interests within

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all the followers of the page. These followers had been extremely responsive towards this
organization and are not only a blatant marketing approach. Moreover, the inherent creativity
of the platform of social media is utilized for helping the organization in properly advertising
all the services and hence notifying the students in the entire world. All of these
advertisements or marketing are extremely mandatory for any business or organization and
especially for the World University (Han & Mithas, 2013). They would be gaining maximum
students from this social media platform. Moreover, awareness is eventually spread by the
presence of social media and hence the university will be ethically absolutely correct and also
will be reminded on the various services they are offering to all the students.
v) Searching for Students: The next significant role of social media for the
organization of World University is the searching for various students (Mishra, Akman &
Mishra, 2014). Social media is responsible for searching out all of their students effective
immediately and efficiently. Social media has the core capability of locating any student, no
matter where he or she is residing.
vi) Easy Affordability: Another significant advantage of the social media is that it is
extremely cost effective and thus could be easily afforded by all organizations irrespective of
its size (Sun & Jeyaraj, 2013). Since, this typical organization of World University is one of
the newest universities; the budget is not as high as other organizations. Marketing campaigns
often take up huge money and with the presence of social media; this cost is reduced to a
greater extent.
vii) Maintaining Databases: The maintenance or management of database is much
easier with the help of social media (Holtshouse, 2013). These platforms comprise of in built
databases and thus storing of all types of information is much easier than the rest of the
platforms.

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All the above mentioned features clearly define the role of social media for the
promoting the model of World University.
Recommendations
World University is one of the most popular universities that are providing online
courses to the students. Although, they would be widely accepted by all the students, there
are some of the major changes that are required in their business processes. The first and the
foremost recommendation for this particular university is to incorporate the process of risk
management within their business. With the presence of risk management process, they
would be able to solve or mitigate all the risks within their business easily and promptly.
Moreover, they will be able to find out the risk probability within their business. This would
be extremely important for them. The next recommendation is to include various laws and
regulations within their business. This incorporation of laws and regulations will be
extremely important for them as it will be responsible for reducing the various illegal
activities within their business. Furthermore, the students will be feeling extremely safe and
secured with the incorporation of compliance. The third recommendation to the World
University is to implement the information systems within their business. Various significant
data and information will be stored within the system. Since, they are a university, they need
to store bulk amount of data within their database. Thus, information system would be
extremely important for them. These above mentioned recommendations will be extremely
vital for them to make their business processes for active and gain more popularity than all
the rest of the universities.
Conclusion
Therefore, from the above discussion, it is concluded that the information technology
or IT can be defined as the significant utilization of several systems, computers, processes,

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physical devices, networking devices and infrastructure to properly create, process, store,
secure and finally exchange data or information in all forms. The utilization of information
technology is not restricted to various operations of information in a business and rather for
personal as well as entertainment purposes. The use of information technology commercially
is responsible for encompassing both the technology and the telephony. Information
technology is implemented in every organization in today’s world with the sole purpose of
maximizing the profit and also gaining competitive advantages within the business. There are
several layers for physical equipments of information technology. Moreover, the hardware,
software, virtualization techniques, operating systems, automation tools and applications are
also parts of this information technology. All the business applications of any business
majorly includes various databases such as SQL Server, web server like Apache, ERP or
enterprise resource planning systems, customer relationship management or CRM systems,
real time order entry transactional systems and Exchange email server. These business
applications are responsible for executing several programmed instructions to do any type of
data operation. This business report has subsequently explained the World University case
study and has also provided the role of social media in the promotion of the business model.

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References
Bardhan, I. R., & Thouin, M. F. (2013). Health information technology and its impact on the
quality and cost of healthcare delivery. Decision Support Systems, 55(2), 438-449.
Bilbao-Osorio, B., Dutta, S., & Lanvin, B. (2013, April). The global information technology
report 2013. In World Economic Forum (pp. 1-383).
Bloom, N., Garicano, L., Sadun, R., & Van Reenen, J. (2014). The distinct effects of
information technology and communication technology on firm
organization. Management Science, 60(12), 2859-2885.
Dahlstrom, E., Walker, J. D., & Dziuban, C. (2013). ECAR study of undergraduate students
and information technology. 2013.
Eason, K. D. (2014). Information technology and organisational change. CRC Press.
Galegher, J., Kraut, R. E., & Egido, C. (2014). Intellectual teamwork: Social and
technological foundations of cooperative work. Psychology Press.
Han, K., & Mithas, S. (2013). Information technology outsourcing and non-IT operating
costs: An empirical investigation. Mis Quarterly, 37(1).
Holtshouse, D. K. (2013). Information technology for knowledge management. Springer
Science & Business Media.
Jones, S. S., Rudin, R. S., Perry, T., & Shekelle, P. G. (2014). Health information technology:
an updated systematic review with a focus on meaningful use. Annals of internal
medicine, 160(1), 48-54.

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Kellermann, A. L., & Jones, S. S. (2013). What it will take to achieve the as-yet-unfulfilled
promises of health information technology. Health affairs, 32(1), 63-68.
Laudon, K. C., & Laudon, J. P. (2015). Management Information Systems: Managing the
Digital Firm Plus MyMISLab with Pearson eText--Access Card Package. Prentice
Hall Press.
Lloyd, I. (2017). Information technology law. Oxford University Press.
Luftman, J., Zadeh, H. S., Derksen, B., Santana, M., Rigoni, E. H., & Huang, Z. D. (2013).
Key information technology and management issues 2012–2013: an international
study. Journal of Information Technology, 28(4), 354-366.
Mishra, D., Akman, I., & Mishra, A. (2014). Theory of reasoned action application for green
information technology acceptance. Computers in human behavior, 36, 29-40.
Schnoll, H. J. (2015). E-government: Information, technology, and transformation.
Routledge.
Schwalbe, K. (2015). Information technology project management. Cengage Learning.
Sun, Y., & Jeyaraj, A. (2013). Information technology adoption and continuance: A
longitudinal study of individuals’ behavioral intentions. Information &
Management, 50(7), 457-465.
Wagner, H. T., Beimborn, D., & Weitzel, T. (2014). How social capital among information
technology and business units drives operational alignment and IT business
value. Journal of Management Information Systems, 31(1), 241-272.