IT Management Issues: Business Solutions for Customer Loyalty Program

This report examines IT management issues, specifically focusing on customer loyalty schemes within the context of the educational platform StudyTogether. It begins with an executive summary that outlines the core functions of loyalty programs in encouraging repeat business through incentives like discounts and exclusive access. The report delves into the specifics of StudyTogether's loyalty program, which rewards students, and analyzes two key business solutions: Business Process Improvement and Customer Analytics, and Big Data solutions. The first solution emphasizes understanding customer behavior through Business Intelligence and Business Process Improvement tools, while the second focuses on leveraging big data for analytics and process automation to personalize rewards and promotions. The report also explores the role of social media in promoting these loyalty models, including strategies for rewarding website visitors, encouraging Facebook engagement, and integrating loyalty programs across multiple platforms. The conclusion underscores the importance of attitudinal loyalty and provides recommendations for StayTogether, such as creative point systems, unique rewards, and customer status differentiation. This comprehensive analysis provides valuable insights into designing and implementing effective customer loyalty programs within an IT management framework.

Running head: IT MANAGEMENT ISSUES
IT Management issues
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author Note

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Executive summary
The loyalty programs are used to encourage various businesses to return to stores. They make
frequent purchases here. Here, some of the incentives included are the advanced access to latest
products, extra discounts and free merchandises. Further, the customers have been typically
registering their data with the company and are provided with unique identifiers. Overall they are
equipped with two primary functions. They have been rewarding their customers regarding brand
quality and delivering the issuing company with various consumer data. As the organizations can
evaluate multiple anonymous purchases, here the use of loyalty programs has been offering extra
data regarding kind of products. This can be purchased together and particular coupons have been
more effective here than the others. The schemes of customer loyalty have rewarded returning to
customers with different kinds of exclusive discounts. They are helpful for developing customer
values and encouraging them to continue shopping and choosing their competitors. Here, the data
collected from customers has helped to target the current marketing. These have been helpful to
encourage consumers to get into the business. It has helped customers to be aware the different
planned changes and developments. Here, the scheme of customer loyalty for the given organization
StudyTogether, has been engaged in rewarding their students. Hence, to understand this current
scenario two business solutions or systematic processes are analyzed. An effective and new model is
intended to be developed from here. Further, the solutions get substantiated with different additional
research studies.

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1. Introduction:
The customer loyalty schemes have been rewarding returning customers with various
exclusive discounts. Any customer loyalty scheme has been benefiting customer values encouraging
them to shop and choose the competitors. The data collected from the customers has been helping to
target the marketing. The loyalty schemes have been helpful to encourage customers to get involved
in a business. This helps customers to know about various planned developments and changes.
In this report, customer loyalty scheme for study together has been involved in rewarding
students. These people were intended to introduce other students with free credits. This has been
depending on the course picked. In this study, two proper business solution and processes are
demonstrated. These are intended to develop a new model. These solutions are substantiated with
various literature reviews.
2. Discussion on the case of customer loyalty scheme of StudyTogether:
StayTogether being an educational institute needs to encourage their students for achieving
more. They have needed to motivate their students and then boost their reputation. This has been no
hidden secret that making students always excited about learning has been a problem. Student
rewards programs have been providing the push they have needed to learn and perform well.
Students can gain better results that can make StayTogether favoured by the parents who want their
wards to provide best opportunities in future.
There are many different ways to implement loyalty gators to help the students. First of all as
discussed before, the students are provided with free credit cards depending on the courses that are
picked. The university has used agents for selling the offering to their employers. Here the

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applications are approved in less than five minutes. Various payments for non-refundable fees are
made by credit card or with the help of Paypal. Besides, there are e-books and laptop purchases that
are an essential component of this course of StayTogether and are present online. Here, the students
have not been opting out of various investments. The pre-configured laptop with the relevant
software are been sent to every student.
For continuing the loyalty program, the students can be rewarded with various points to pass
tests and perform well in their assignments. StayTogether can design an all-in-one card. This can be
acting as the tool of a point of collection, student ID and many more. The student cards can be used
as the sign-in-tool for tracking attendances and notify the parents as any new student arrives.
Further, automatic personalized emails can be sent to students for showing their balance that is
updated and they must be kept motivated. Further, they should be staying connected to students and
they must be informed about various special events. Further, there must be ability that students can
check their balance at any point in time over the Internet.
3. Using proper business solutions to be employed to develop the model:
The two solutions are discussed below.
1. Business Process Improvement and Customer Analytics:
The first model to be used here is the Business Process Improvement and Customer
Analytics. The knowledge of the customers and their focus on well-designed moments is the primary
ingredients in maintaining a loyal customer base. StayTogether can invest in Business Intelligence to
understand the customers better (Hill & Alexander, 2017). They can also use BPM or Business
Process Improvement tools. Here the problems take place as the investments are unable to share the
common goal and never use coverage at the point. Here the processes are driven by the behaviour of

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customers. This is a better design and arranges the moments of truth. StayTogether has been
investing a lot in analytics and BI technologies for understanding the customers better. Here, the
main challenge for StayTogether has been the ability to achieve higher insights into customer
behaviour and leverage those insights for improving the process of business. At StayTogether,
Business Information has been used as the tool of management information systems for aiding to
summarize and compile the huge volumes of data through dashboards and executive reports. As this
is effective, the use stops short to impact and identify business processes in an influential and
meaningful way to customers at the moments of truth (Orel & Kara, 2014).
The analytics are used widely to understand better how processes are done. However, the
companies need to move further. Very often business process improvement has been focused on data
and never on processes. As StayTogether start using analytics for driving the process design, the
outcomes are outstanding. StayTogether has turning out to be more dynamic and helping people has
been responding properly to the behaviour of customers (Bowden, Dagger & Elliott, 2015).
However, there has proactive reach out to them and setting new standards regarding customer
services. The cross-feeding advanced data analytics and optimization of business processes have
been providing the best scenario to assure the loyalty of customers. Further, the embedding of
analytically-developed decisions to business processes has been leading to new and profitable
interaction with customers (Eid, 2015).
2. Big Data solutions:
Data analytics:
The big data solutions can execute analytics at the scale and quickly create various shopper
personas have richer insights. By shopper personas, the marketers can define loyalty programs for
achieving the needed behaviour. It helps in a rise in repeats, spend, acquire and retain risks of churn

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shoppers. This also includes an increase in profits and has same time marketers can recognize
shopper personas for mapping relevant incentives for driving behavior (Hwang & Mattila, 2017).
This helps in offering discounts and offering service perks.
Process automation:
The big data technologies are helpful for StayTogether to automate data collection and
processes of storages. They must run the analytics to deliver various shopper insights very fast and
deliver the personalized rewards and products. This is to be done to reward all the shoppers by their
channel of engagements, history of purchases and intents for timing and purchase. Further, it is
helpful to track changes and metrics in customer behaviors for measuring the success of the loyalty
programs (Caruana, Ramasashan & Krentler, 2015).
4. Role of social media in promoting the model:
The above model for customer loyalty scheme can be promoted in social media through various
ways. These are highlighted below.
Rewarding website
visitors
Facebook and Twitter have been retargeting that is helpful to allow people to
display advertisements only to users who have visited particular pages of
websites. These techniques can be used to drive traffic across various pages
under the site over a considerable period (Kim, Vogt & Knutson, 2015). This is
also helpful to reward users as they process to further steps or finish those
processes. For doing this on Facebook, combinations of various website-
custom audiences are to be used. Here, the similar method can be adapted for
Twitter also.
Rewarding ongoing
Facebook engagements
As the aim of StayTogether has been raising Facebook organic reach, one can
rise the user engagement. Hence, as far as loyalty program is concerned,

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StayTogether can provide points for every comment and like in their posts.
These types of incentive have been the easiest method to create the loyalty
programs. There have been two main kinds of advantages to this method. Here,
comments and likes are raised to develop exposure (Zhang, van Doorn &
Leeflang, 2014). As the fans get engaged with contents that content also
reaches to some of the friends. Thus they can join various programs also.
Additionally, users also actively look to the content and engage with that and
this extra engagement raises the organic reach of the pages (Blut et al., 2014).
Rewarding loyalty over
various platforms
At many times, the conversions of social media tasks occur at other places.
This happens over websites, newsletters and offline at brick-and-mortar
businesses (Shen & Bae, 2018). At these cases creating repetitive behaviour
over social media has not been sufficient to gain business goals. Besides,
running of distinct programs of various other channels is also hard to control.
5. Conclusion:
It is understood from customer loyalty program, that it has been an expensive tool to create
customer loyalty. This is done as various other aspects of building loyalty has been satisfying the
product line, service and store concept. In the way loyalty program for StayTogether has been
offering multiple soft and monetary advantages. The later one has been inducing behavioural loyalty
whereas the former one was stimulating attitudinal loyalty. This has been vital to creating attitudinal
loyalty taking place among the consumers. This is because it has been more sustainable than being
behavioural. Apart from this, today’s customers have been buying options and the competition has
been intense. Thus today’s consumers have been loyal to a retailer and various brands
simultaneously. Apart from this, the loyal customers have always comprised of every kind of

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positive characteristics that they have generally been assumed to perform. In this way, StayTogether
has needed to reevaluate them as loyalty must be the outcome.
6. Recommendations:
Before developing customer loyalty program StayTogether must know whether this has been a
helpful tactic for their business. They must determine the value of their customers in their
organization and the total cost to have them. To understand these more effectively, various
recommendations are listed below.
 StayTogether should be creative with their points:
They must reward points to programs that have been among various efficient loyalty
programs over there. Here, there are two innovative methods to include points to the plans. The first
one is a name of the currency. The next one is a visual representation of points.
 They must be creative to the ways the customers are rewarded:
The discounts are considered to be the standard customer reward under loyalty programs. This
program requires sticking out from the crowd. In reality, much of the members of loyalty programs
have believed that the prizes offered by them have been irrelevant to the interests.
 Providing customers with statuses:
It has been one of the smartest methods to differentiate any program. With the help of this tactic,
StayTogether has been showing their students exactly where they have been standing under their
loyalty program. They must be provided with something for striving towards and develop an
exclusive club of the most effective loyalty program members. Students would love to share as they
belong to anything that has been seen as essential or rare.

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 They must be creative with the methods in which customers have been earning:
Notable loyalty programs of StayTogether have been rewarding customers as their expectations
become very low. Satisfying customers after purchasing has been efficient to create positive
reinforcement it never develops memorable experience for customers.

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