IT Management Issues for StudyTogether Online University: Analysis

This report delves into the IT management challenges and solutions for the StudyTogether online university, a novel concept offering online courses with a customer loyalty scheme. It explores the application of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions for managing student data, course management, and administrative processes, highlighting benefits such as data organization, security, and automated reporting. The report also examines the role of Business Intelligence (BI), specifically data analytics, data warehousing, and data mining, to enhance business operations through data analysis, clustering, and trend identification. Furthermore, it discusses the strategic use of social media for promoting the loyalty scheme, gathering student preferences, and facilitating communication between students and faculty. The report concludes by emphasizing the importance of these IT solutions for the success of the online university model and its StudyTogether loyalty scheme.

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StudyTogether
IT Management Issues
5/7/2018

StudyTogether
Table of Contents
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................2
Suitable Business Processes/Solutions..................................................................................................2
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Solutions.................................................................................2
Business Intelligence Processes.........................................................................................................4
Role of Social Media.............................................................................................................................5
Security Concerns..................................................................................................................................7
Conclusion.............................................................................................................................................7
References.............................................................................................................................................8
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Introduction
The private educational institutes and agencies have come together to form a World
University. The university is completely online that provides the lecturers to provide learning
sessions from any of the campuses in the world through online mediums and portals. The
interactions among the staff members and with the students are completely online. Also, the
university would allow the students to choose the country they wish to graduate from.
The university has also decided to launch a customer loyalty scheme called StudyTogether.
As per this scheme, a student will be rewarded if he/she introduces another student with fee
credit as per the course that is selected. E-book and laptop purchases will also be available
online and the enrolled students will be provided with pre-configured laptops. The payment
for non-refundable fees will be done either by credit card or PayPal. The document
recommends two business processes/solutions applicable to the model and also discusses the
role of social media.
Suitable Business Processes/Solutions
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Solutions
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is a business process software solution that allows a
business unit to integrate all the back-end functions and operations to achieve the business
goals and objectives.
The business model of World University and StudyTogether loyalty scheme will take several
benefits from the ERP solutions. There will be a number of back-end methods and
technologies that will be involved in the proposed business model, such as student
registration and enrolment system, course management system, faculty management system,
collaboration & integration tools, and many more. These methods will be easily combined
together to allow the World University to achieve the aims (Rouhani & Mehri, 2018).
Some of the benefits that the ERP processes and solutions that will be associated with the
proposed model are as listed below:
 There will be a lot of data associated with the World University. The data from all the
different campuses and universities involved in terms of the details of the students,
course details, information on the staff members, training needs, etc. will be involved.
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ERP solutions will easily organize and manage such huge data sets to avoid the
situations, such as data loss, data replication, and data leakage.
 Security and privacy of the data sets is another significant aspect that will be covered
with the involvement of the ERP solutions. These solutions will capture automated
backup of the data sets to preserve the information at all times (Kadir, Ismail & Yatin,
2015).
 The administration processes, such as collection of fee, management of the enrolment
lists, mapping of the students and courses, mapping of the staff member and courses,
declaration & management of the result sheets, etc. will be easy to implement using
the ERP systems.
 The overall management process will also become quicker, more accurate, and faster
with the aid of ERP solutions.
The management and administration will also earn several benefits with the use and
implementation of the ERP solutions. The communication channel between the entities
involved, such as students, faculty, and administration will be effective. There will also be
zero redundancy in the records associated with the system. With the automation and
integration of the back-end operations, dynamic management will be possible. The overall
system will be scalable that will fit in with the requirements of the university. The number of
students being enrolled in the wide ranges of courses offered may vary from time to time.
Also, the faculty members involved with the online interactions and the availability of these
members will also vary. The dynamic management on the basis of the real-time information
will be made possible with the ERP solutions. These solutions will also provide microscopic
and macroscopic views which would allow the development of a cost-effective solution with
minimal software requirements. The central data repository will be used for the storage of the
data and information sets for easier and secure data access. The turnaround time for the
system processes will be low and the automated reports will also be extracted from the
system (Chou & Chang, 2008).
The students and faculty members will also acquire numerous benefits with the use and
involvement of ERP processes and solutions in the system. The students will be able to
access all of the required information, such as marks, attendance records, course materials,
and schedule & timetable from a single place. The organization of the information sets by the
faculty members and computerized management will be made possible with the use of ERP
solutions.
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Business Intelligence Processes
Business Intelligence is a concept that involves numerous technologies and methods for the
automated data analysis and storage of the information sets to obtain the past, present, and
future data views for enhancement of the efficiency of the business operations.
Business Intelligence is an umbrella that includes various technologies and concepts. Three
of these processes that would be applicable in this case would be data analytics, data
warehousing, and data mining.
Data analysis will allow the following functionalities and operations to take place and will
offer several benefits to the World University and its business model.
 Clustering and segmentation of information will be made possible with the
application of data analytics processes. These functions will involve the division of
huge data sets in smaller groups on the basis of the data properties and attributes. The
similarities and patterns on these smaller groups will then be identified for the
execution of the business operations. For instance, the student information will be
clustered and segmented on the basis of the country & university selected along with
the desired course. The offering and enrolment processes will be carried out
accordingly (Balachandran & Prasad, 2017).
 Classification is another operation that will be possible to be carried out on the data
sets that will group the data sets in the classes on the basis of certain attributes. The
analytics results may be used to identify the students and the faculty members to map
them with the courses and to identify the availability of these entities.
 Regression is one of the processes under data analytics that may be used to find out
the relationship between the dependent and independent variables to target specific
business operations. For instance, the dependent variable in this case may be course
timings and independent variables will be availability of the faculty member. The
learning sessions will be developed only on the basis of the results of the relationship
between these variables.
 The requirements and expectations of the students and all the other entities associated
with the World University may vary with time and may depend upon several factors,
such as demand of a particular course in the market, employment opportunities,
historical data on the career growth in a particular course, and likewise. The
enrolment processes and the number of enrolments in a particular course will vary on
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the basis of this information. Data analysis will allow the identification and
highlighting of these data patterns and trends (Ram, Zhang & Koronios, 2016).
Enhanced business intelligence will be made possible with the integration of data
warehousing processes and methods. There will be a number of decisions that the
administration and management of the World University will be required to take. These
decisions will include the scheduling of the learning sessions, conduction of the performance
evaluation methods, interaction processes with the students and faculty members, strategic
plans, and likewise. Data warehousing will allow decision-making processes to be easier and
automated on the basis of all the data and information sets associated with the university. The
primary focus of the development and integration of the data warehousing systems is to
enhance the speed of data retrieval (Watson, Goodhue & Wixom, 2002). As a result, the
speed and accuracy of query performance and system performance will be enhanced. The
system load will be evenly distributed across the entire technical infrastructure. There will be
different data sources involved in this system. For instance, data will be collected from
different universities and campuses, market data, etc. These disparate data sources will be
combined and brought together on a common platform for advanced data analytics. The data
quality and consistency along with the historical intelligence will also be made possible with
the use of data warehousing (Alhyasat & Al-Dalahmeh, 2013).
Data mining is one of the significant concepts that come under Business Intelligence. It is
solution that allows processing, storing, and analysing of the data and information sets.
Cluster detection is one of the primary operations and processes that will be carried out using
data mining. The patterns involved with student preferences and learning cycles will be
obtained with the implementation of this technology. Anomaly detection will also be
implemented and applied on the data sets to find out the abnormalities in the data sets. As a
result, the student satisfaction levels will be enhanced (Bone & Houck, 2017).
Role of Social Media
Social media is being increasingly used in the professional and personal communications and
interaction processes along with numerous other business operations.
The proposed business model of an online World University and StudyTogether loyalty
scheme will also benefit with the use and involvement of the social media channels.
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As per the StudyTogether loyalty scheme, the students will be rewarded if they succeed in
getting another student enrolled in any of the courses. The students may use the social media
channels, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. to promote the scheme and to inform
their respective contacts about the same. There are various public groups and forums that
have been developed on these social media channels and the same may be utilized to inform
the public about the scheme. As a result, the student may receive the request from a friend or
another student aspiring to join the university in any of the courses offered (Tess, 2013).
There are a lot of information and data sets that are available on the social media channels.
For instance, the other universities continue to post about the specific courses and their
demand among the students. There is also information available on the demands and
preferences of the students on specific courses. Such information sets can be easily acquired
from the social media channels and may be analysed with the application of the data analytics
tools (Neier & Zayer, 2015). The information on the preferences and demands of the students
will be obtained. Also, there may be updates that may be required to be implemented on the
learning materials and course information. Such modifications will be done using the
analytics results.
The business model is entirely based on the online interactions and communication channels.
The interaction between the students and the faculty member will also be carried out using
online mediums only. Social media and networks may be used for the enhancement of the
frequency of these interactions. The students may request the faculty members to share
course information and learning sessions apart from the ones available on the university
portal on the social media channels. The faculty members may also come up with the latest
information regarding any specific course and may update the same on their respective social
media channels so that the learning level of the students may be enhanced (Hrastinski &
Dennen, 2012).
The establishment of World University of such a kind is a novel approach that has not been
established before. The introduction of web-based platforms, cloud computing, and other
latest technologies have allowed the universities and education institutions to offer distance
and online learning courses to the students. However, the development of a university that is
completely online and also provides an opportunity to enrol in a course from any of the other
university in the world has not been done before. The idea will take some time to be
registered in the minds of the students and their guardians. Social media channels may be
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used for the marketing and advertising purposes for the university along with the
StudyTogether scheme being launched by it. The university administration may utilize the
social media channels and may also publish blogs to explain the students and guardians about
the several benefits that may be offered with the success of such a concept at a global level.
The quality and effectiveness of the global learning levels may also be enhanced as an
outcome (Marchand, Hennig-Thurau & Flemming, 2018).
Security Concerns
The establishment of an online university offering varied courses at a global level with the
use of concepts and solutions, such as ERP solutions, Business Intelligence processes, and
social media will involve certain security concerns. There will be probability of the
occurrence of security risks and attacks, such as exposure of the sensitive and confidential
information and data sets adversely impacting the availability, confidentiality, and integrity
of the data sets.
It would be essential to implement advanced security protocols and concepts through the
systems and applications for information security and data protection. The measures, such as
advanced access control, multi-fold authentication, encryption of the data sets, and anti-
malware tools may be used for ensuring the security.
Conclusion
The business model of World University and StudyTogether loyalty scheme will take several
benefits from the ERP solutions. The communication channel between the entities involved,
such as students, faculty, and administration will be effective. There will also be zero
redundancy in the records associated with the system. Business Intelligence processes as data
analytics, data warehousing, and data mining will also be effective in this case. Data
warehousing will allow decision-making processes to be easier and automated on the basis of
all the data and information sets associated with the university. Cluster detection is one of the
primary operations and processes that will be carried out using data mining. Social media and
networks may be used for the enhancement of the frequency of the online interactions and
communications. Social media channels may be used for the marketing and advertising
purposes for the university along with the StudyTogether scheme being launched by it.
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References
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Analytics in the Cloud for Business Intelligence. Procedia Computer Science, 112,
1112-1122. doi: 10.1016/j.procs.2017.08.138
Bone, A., & Houck, K. (2017). The benefits of data mining. Elife, 6. doi: 10.7554/elife.30280
Chou, S., & Chang, Y. (2008). The implementation factors that influence the ERP (enterprise
resource planning) benefits. Decision Support Systems, 46(1), 149-157. doi:
10.1016/j.dss.2008.06.003
Hrastinski, S., & Dennen, V. (2012). Social media in higher education: Introduction to the
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Tess, P. (2013). The role of social media in higher education classes (real and virtual) – A
literature review. Computers In Human Behavior, 29(5), A60-A68. doi:
10.1016/j.chb.2012.12.032
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