ITC563: Analysis of Management Decisions in a Global Online University

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ITC563: IT MANAGEMENT ISSUES ASSESSMENT ITEM 4
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Executive Summary
Decision-making is a crucial aspect of the business. While implementing a business
idea, there are many options that have to be considered in order to get the best out
of good options for reaping profits in the business. In this report, a case of World
University which is an online university comprising a group of private higher
education institutions around the world. The whole discussion on this report had
been done on the four decisions made by the senior management. First was
associated with the customer loyalty program, the second was about mandatory
purchase of e-books and laptop from the university only. The third and fourth are
regarding the implementation of Information Systems, such as CRM and BI. In the
report, all the four options had been critically analysed, wherein the pros and cons of
all the options had been discussed. The issues with all the options were identified
and elaborated with their impact on the business. The report ended with the
recommendations regarding them. The first recommendation is that the university
should not be forceful to make students purchase a laptop. The second is that in
order to make the bottom line unaffected by the monetary reward of the loyalty
scheme, the non-monetary reward should be given. For the IT-related decisions, the
organisation should provide training to the employees.
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Table of Contents
Executive Summary............................................................................................................................2
Introduction..........................................................................................................................................4
Main Body............................................................................................................................................5
Overview of the Business Idea......................................................................................................5
Involvement of Information System and Information Technology............................................5
Analysis of Management Processes............................................................................................6
Issues and Their Impact on Business..........................................................................................8
Conclusion...........................................................................................................................................9
Recommendations..............................................................................................................................9
References........................................................................................................................................10
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Introduction
In today's day and age, starting an online business is quite simple. This has
revolutionised the higher education system. Numerous venues for online learning
have been pioneered, thereby creating a huge profit-making opportunity for
investors. In this report, a business idea for online higher level learning will be
discussed, wherein the introduction of the Information System (IS) and Information
Technology (IT) in the business will be talked about. In addition to this, various
business management processes and information systems and technology will be
critically analysed. The strengths and weaknesses of the information system will be
thoroughly elucidated. Furthermore, the issues associated with the implementation of
IT will also be outlined and discussed. The report will conclude after discussing some
recommendations for the business to improve substantiated with IT and IS literature.
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Main Body
Overview of the Business Idea
The World University is one of its kind online university which is a conglomeration of
a group of privately-owned educational institutions around the globe. The university
will provide online lectures delivered from any associated institution to other. It offers
a wide range of online courses to the students. All that is required from the students
is to sign in and take lectures anytime anywhere. The university also offers online
assistance from the faculty. The best part of the university is that it offers students a
choice to choose on their own the country they want to graduate from. The senior
management has taken some decision regarding the business that includes a
customer loyalty scheme ‘Study Together Loyalty' to reward those students who
bring another student. All the students enrolling in the course need to purchase E-
books and laptops which is mandatory for them. For a better engagement of past
and existing scholars and functioning, Customer Relationship System will be used. In
addition to this, the use of Business Intelligence for analysis of current market trend
and data collection has been proposed.
Involvement of Information System and Information Technology
In today’s time and the past two decades, the growth of IT has been remarkable.
Hence, the use of IT and IS for the growth of the World University around the globe.
Even though Information System and Information Technology are used
synonymously, there actual functions and meaning are different. Information system
bridges computer science and business. It comprises people, processes, and
systems to develop, distribute, manipulate, and disseminate information. IS includes
information theory, social science, Foundation of Management, and Information
Technology (Powell & Dent‐Micallef, 2017). Talking about Information Technology, it
falls under IS but mainly focused on the technology used in the systems. It is
characterised by the design, management, and implementation of computer-based
IS. It includes programming, database design, mathematics, and computer science.
Since the World University comprises a large number of colleges connected by an
online platform. The whole process requires a great deal of information and to
manage that is not a cakewalk.
For the better execution of the online business, it is important for the management to
the first review, develop, establish, and operate a data management and information
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management system as they can of great importance while making decisions. It
increases the effectiveness and efficiency of the organisational tasks. The World
University is based on a complex organisational structure and hence, it requires a
system that should be dynamic and is able to handle a large amount of data. For the
online learning platform, there are different Information Systems that can be used for
different aspects (Powell & Dent‐Micallef, 2017). These comprise the Management
Information System, Transaction Processing Support (TPS), Executive Information
System (EIS), Work Group Support Systems, Expert System, etc. As given here that
the senior management of the World University needs to collect data and analyse it
in order to understand the market trends and scholars’ choice. Therefore, the best
Information System is the Decision Support System (DSS) which is capable of
evaluating the business data and help in business decision making (Dutta, et.al,
2015). One thing which is important to note here is that DSS is a more of an
informational application whose efficiency and usefulness is dependent on the input
information while answering the queries. It can provide a comparative sales figure for
a quarter or annual. In addition to this, proposed revenue figures from the total
number of admission in a semester per program. Furthermore, the system will
provide comparative data of various alternative for facilitating sound decision
making.
Analysis of Management Processes
The management has decided to introduce a customer loyalty scheme in order to
reward in terms of fee credit to those students who introduce a new student (Carter
et.al, 2014). This would help in increasing the number of intakes and provide
necessary data about customer and help in segmenting them, thereby minimising
the unprofitable customers (Lin & Bennett, 2014). Talking about the mandatory
laptop and e-book purchase, the decision will be beneficial for the university in
reaping profits. In addition to this, the laptop is pre-configured and protected with
software that would help in keeping the lecture video go public. Students’ information
is also protected by an unbreakable password in case of any mishap.
As given that the management of the World University will make use of two
Information System for better management of stakeholders and to make sound
decisions. It is important for the university to build rapport with existing, past, and
potential students in order to reap long-term benefits. Customer Relationship
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Management system can be very useful in this area. The senior management of the
World University has decided to start ‘Study Together Loyalty’ programme which is a
customer loyalty scheme. CRM will help in keeping the information of the alumni and
existing students in order to contact them to promote the university and introduce
other potential scholars and get rewarded. In addition to this, the information
regarding laptop and e-book purchase as a part of the course can also be stored in
the system.
There are some strengths of the CRM that can help the World University in going
and growing. The first and foremost is that it helps in finding and targeting the
potential students and clients that will contribute to the increase in the profit. All the
data associated with the clients and students can be stored and the management
can easily refer to it to predict their current and future behaviour. This way they can
provide the right services to the right people. This would ultimately increase the
number of intakes as the institutions can address students' need by modifying their
courses, if possible. CRM also ensures customer satisfaction as their demands are
being fulfilled. Hence, it increases the dependency of the customers on the
organisation and they will show loyalty towards it. In addition to this, CRM improves
customer interaction and relationships by employing advanced communication
technology. CRM assists in gathering the students’ data and other personal
information. This can help the senior management in making use of business
intelligence to improve the decision-making process by updating the data regarding
the needs and preferences of the students.
The other Information system used by the World University is Business Intelligence
for turning the data collected from CRM to insights and actions. With the collected
knowledge, the senior management of the university can act accordingly and design
their offering as per their demand. This can be done to beat the competitors in the
market as well. There are many benefits for making use of Business Intelligence in
the processes. First and foremost is that BI assists in faster reporting of data along
with the accuracy which can further result in the speedy and sound decision-making
process. In addition to this, it also improves the data quality and its processing
efficiency is even better than some of the widely used data processing software.
Ultimately, the use of BI in data processing reduces the cost of data handling and
processes. The revenues coming from the business is also increased.
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Issues and Their Impact on Business
The loyalty programme has some downsides that make it a bit complex option for
starting the business. The rewards in terms of fee credit will definitely affect the
bottom line of the organisation (Kiseleva, et.al, 2016). It will impact the revenue and
profits of the university. Talking about the mandatory purchase of E-books and
laptop, this can put the university in the disadvantageous position. Many of the
students might be having their own laptops and forcing them to purchase a new
laptop will increase a load on their budget. This needs to think again.
As the strengths of the two management decision associated with the use of
Information System and Technology have been seen, it is important to understand
the issues as well. There should be a proper analysis of the downsides of the two
options. Talking about the CRM, implementing it might decrease the personal
interaction with students as most of the sessions will be held online. In addition to
this, CRM is a computer-based application and will lead to over automation and will
affect the relationship with the management. CRM implementation might affect the
management too. A weak combination and understanding of the management with
the system might result in poor services to the student. The university would not be
able to achieve its goals.
In addition to this, using CRM might overload the unnecessary information. This
would make the information processing a difficult task. Conflicts might take place in
case of CRM failure. This will directly affect the decision-making process. CRM is
usually characterised with inefficiently defined tasks that include various internal
activities, such as process costs and time, data quality, coordination of tasks, and
productivity (Chuang & Lin, 2013). It has been noticed that CRM finds difficulty in
succeeding with new data and information feed. CRM needs a large amount of data
in order to achieve proper productivity and efficiency. Otherwise, the whole purpose
of using CRM for the University purpose will be valueless.
Talking about the use of BI, the data needs to be well-structured in order to gain
better results out of them. However, most of the data entered to perform even simple
BI processes, the data need to be structured or else, it would lead to some
discrepancies (Thamir & Poulis, 2015). This would waste a lot of time and resources
of the user. Furthermore, BI requires a well-efficient and effective strategy for a
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particular problem. Without a BI strategy, the use of BI is insignificant. In addition to
this, both CRM and BI needs trained employees in order to achieve better
performance (Lee, 2015). Hence, these are not budget-friendly options initially.
Conclusion
This report was all about a business idea for online higher level learning, wherein
various business management processes were critically analysed. In addition to this,
the introduction of the Information System (IS) and Information Technology (IT) in
the business was talked about. Furthermore, the issues associated with the
implementation of IT were also outlined and discussed. The report ended after
discussing some recommendations for the business to improve substantiated with IT
and IS literature.
Recommendations
The first and foremost recommendation is that instead of mandating the purchase of
E-books and laptops, the same should be made optional. The university should
collaborate with some famous publishers and keep their E-books on their portal. The
lecturers should recommend those books. The students will willingly purchase them
online and the university won’t be criticised. The second is reward should not only be
in terms of monetary terms, but the students should also be made feel valued and let
them sell the courses through word of mouth approach. The service standards
should be improved first. The third and the last is related to CRM and BI. The
organisation should first provide the necessary training to every employee to first
structure the data and segment it in order to analyse and process it (Lee, 2015).
These are applications should be fully utilised as per their functions and controls
(Thamir & Poulis, 2015).
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References
 Carter, M., Wright, R., Thatcher, J. B., & Klein, R. (2014). Understanding online
customers’ ties to merchants: the moderating influence of trust on the relationship
between switching costs and e-loyalty. European Journal of Information
Systems, 23(2), 185-204.
 Chuang, S. H., & Lin, H. N. (2013). The roles of infrastructure capability and
customer orientation in enhancing customer-information quality in CRM systems:
Empirical evidence from Taiwan. International Journal of Information
Management, 33(2), 271-281.
 Dutta, S., Geiger, T., & Lanvin, B. (2015). The global information technology
report 2015. In the World Economic Forum.[JL].
 Kiseleva, E. M., Nekrasova, M. L., Mayorova, M. A., Rudenko, M. N., & Kankhva,
V. S. (2016). The theory and practice of customer loyalty management and
customer focus in enterprise activity. International Review of Management and
Marketing, 6(6S), 95-103.
 Lee, M. C. (2015). Business Intelligence, Knowledge Management, and
Customer Relationship Management Technological Support in Enterprise
Competitive Competence. In Handbook of Research on Organizational
Transformations through Big Data Analytics (pp. 243-262). IGI Global.
 Lin, Z., & Bennett, D. (2014). Examining retail customer experience and the
moderation effect of loyalty programmes. International Journal of Retail &
Distribution Management, 42(10), 929-947.
 Powell, T. C., & Dent‐Micallef, A. (2017). Information technology as a competitive
advantage: The role of human, business, and technology resources. Strategic
management journal, 18(5), 375-405.
 Thamir, A., & Poulis, E. (2015). Business intelligence capabilities and
implementation strategies. International Journal of Global Business, 8(1), 34.
 Thamir, A., & Poulis, E. (2015). Business intelligence capabilities and
implementation strategies. International Journal of Global Business, 8(1), 34.
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