Comprehensive Report: IT Management Issues at World University

This business report focuses on the IT management issues at World University, an online education provider. It examines the university's structure, services, and the role of information technology in its operations. The report details key decisions made by senior management, such as the 'StudyTogether' customer loyalty scheme and providing laptops to students. It explores two critical business processes: risk management and compliance, highlighting their importance in enhancing the business model. The report also analyzes the role of social media in promoting the university's business, emphasizing its significance in interaction, responsiveness, marketing, and student engagement. Finally, it offers recommendations for further improvement, providing a comprehensive overview of the university's IT management landscape.

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

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Executive Summary
The main aim of this business report is to learn about the various details of the case study of
World University. This university is a collection of few private institutions and is providing
online courses with the help of information technology. There are several services and
products, which are significantly associated with the information technology such as
equipments of telecom, hardware, software, semiconductors, e commerce, internet and many
others. The report will be providing various important and significant features of this
particular university. Information and communication technology or ICT is the proper
superset of information technology. Few recommendations are also provided here for the
betterment of the business of World University.

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Discussion..................................................................................................................................3
Case Study..............................................................................................................................3
Various Decisions Taken by Senior Management.................................................................4
Two Business Processes for Enhancing Business Model......................................................4
Role of Social Media to Promote Business Model................................................................6
Recommendations......................................................................................................................9
Conclusion................................................................................................................................10
References................................................................................................................................11

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Introduction
The significant utilization of all types of computers, systems or any other computing
device to manipulate, store, transmit and retrieve data to provide competitive advantages to
any organization is known as information technology or IT. There are various products as
well as services that are solely linked to this information technology like telecom equipments,
software, hardware, internet, semiconductors, e commerce and many more (Dahlstrom,
Walker & Dziuban, 2013). There are eventually three types of applications in information
technology. They are processing techniques, statistical application and finally mathematical
methods for decision making. Moreover, the simulation of the thinking that is of higher order
is properly done with the help of information technology. IT management is the proper
management of information technology within the organization and thus reducing the
chances of any type of error.
The following report outlines a brief discussion on the management of information
technology for the case study of World University. Several decisions are being undertaken by
the senior management for the betterment of the organization. They have incorporated two
distinct business processes to properly enhance the business model. Proper recommendations
will also be given.
Discussion
Case Study
One of the most popular universities that is supposed to gain utmost popularity in its
field is World University. It solely provides several online courses to the students. World
University is the proper group of several famous universities that are located worldwide for
the purpose of providing online lectures from anywhere in the world. These lecturers are

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from various places and can take up classes as per their busy schedule. Each and every
interaction of this university with the students is done via online and the students or the
lecturers do not have to visit to the campus. Moreover, flexibility is given to the students for
choosing their own university and thus mitigating the barriers of location. These types of
barriers often stop any student to reach to the university. Thus, the students will be extremely
happy with the World University and so will the lecturers as they do not have to visit to the
university campus for delivering lecturers to their students.
Various Decisions Taken by Senior Management
The management of the World University have taken few decisions for their business.
The two important decisions of the organization are as follows:
i) The first decision is a customer loyalty scheme, known as StudyTogether. This
would be given to those students, who would be referring to any other student for studying in
the university (Bloom et al., 2014). It is a fixed fee that is transferred either by PayPal or
credit card. The applications will also be entertained real fast.
ii) The second decision that they have taken is to give laptops to the students for
making their education easier. A proper and pre-configured laptop would be providing, hence
reducing extra costs for the students.
Two Business Processes for Enhancing Business Model
Business processes are the business activities of any organization. Each and every
organization comprises of various business processes that make them absolutely unique from
all other organizations (Eason, 2014). The two important business processes that should be
incorporated within the World University for the purpose of enhancing of their business
model are given below:

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i) Risk Management Procedure: The first business process is risk management
process. The procedure of risk management that helps to identify, evaluate and finally
prioritize various important risks or threats that could be dangerous for the organization is
known as risk management process. Moreover, it helps to reduce or minimize and control the
chances of risks and thus is incorporated by several organizations (Jones et al., 2014). The
opportunities of any organization are increased with this process. The most important
objective of the risk management procedure is the assurance of the statement that various
risks could be vulnerable for the University. Risk management procedure is extremely
important for every organization and thus making the university perfect for the students and
its employees.
ii) Incorporation of Compliance: The second important business process to the
organization of World University is the proper incorporation of laws, rules or compliance.
The compliance is the kind of safety auditing or legal activities (Bilbao-Osorio, Dutta &
Lanvin, 2013). It eventually provides confirmation as well as certification to the user to
successfully fulfil every significant requirement of the regulations or standards. Each and
every standard and law is important for the World University to maintain discipline within
the university. These laws are to be followed by all the students and organizational
employees or staffs. This particular university must be incorporating the business process of
compliance to properly enhance their business model (Sun & Jeyaraj, 2013). Moreover, the
students would be secured with such laws.
These two business processes are important for this World University to obtain all
types of competitive advantages or business objectives and goals.

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Role of Social Media to Promote Business Model
Social media can be defined as the proper collection of any online communication
channel that is solely dedicated to the interactions, collaboration, community based inputs
and proper sharing of contents. The various applications and websites that are dedicated to
the social networking, forums, micro blogging, bookmarking and many more are done with
the help of social media (Galegher, Kraut & Egido, 2014). It is considered as the most
important and significant application for the modern or youth generation. The youth
generation always wishes to stay connected with their families and peers with this social
media and thus it is utilized in various fields. The most popular and significant examples of
social media mainly include Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+. For this particular
case study of World University, social plays an important role for promoting their business
model. Since, their business model is new, it is important to promote their business model
properly, so that the students and the rest of the world get a good idea about their business
(Kellermann & Jones, 2013). Thus, they should take up the platform of social media to
properly enhance as well as promote their business model. The most important features or
roles of social media for the promotion of World University business model are as follows:
i) Proper and Significant Interactions: The first important role of the platform of
social media is the proper as well as significant interaction of social media for the World
University (Holtshouse, 2013). Social media is responsible for providing utmost significant
advantage of providing interaction scope and abilities with students and lecturers. The target
market or target audience in this case study is the students, who will be taking the classes or
lectures properly. All the students of the World University have the significant capability to
interact with the university by means of their social media page. They can check the various
feedbacks of the university from the other students and thus this helps them to understand the
position of the World University in current market and hence increasing the popularity of this

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particular university (Laudon & Laudon, 2015). Due to this constant interaction with the
students, the university will be able to know about the various problems or issues of their
students. Thus, they would be able to solve these problems eventually and properly. All the
requirements of these students are then addressed.
ii) Proper Responsiveness: The second important role of the social media in the
promotion of the business model of World University is the proper improvement of the
responsiveness of the university (Han & Mithas, 2013). The important platform of this social
media is eventually utilized for making all the important procedures to provide as well as
receive several feedbacks. All of these feedbacks are much lesser than any other feedback. If
any particular student is facing major problems or issues regarding the several services or
courses of this World University, that specific student can easily share his or her views over
the social media page and thus reducing the chance of getting unpopularity due to the rise of
social media (Mishra, Akman & Mishra, 2014). Moreover, the social media page also
provides important details regarding the user and hence the university does not have to search
for their students’ details.
iii) Probable Competitors: Since, World University is the new university in market,
there are various competitors of this organization. All these competitors make the position of
the organization much vulnerable within the market and they suffer through major problems.
Furthermore, these types of competitors are important for the World University to make their
business processes much more effective and efficient than any other university (Lloyd, 2017).
Social media is the best method to know about the position of the competitors and World
University within the business. These competitors even share their business ideas, missions
and visions on their respective social media pages.

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iv) Effective as well as Efficient Marketing: The next significant role of the platform
of social media for the World University organization is their effective as well as efficient
marketing (Schwalbe, 2015). All these platforms are utilized for helping the organization in
generating the various interests for the social media page followers. All of these followers are
extremely responsive for the World University, thus increasing the marketing approaches for
this university. Furthermore, the creativity of social media platform is properly used to help
this organization for the purposes of proper advertisement to the services. This helps in the
notification of students, present worldwide. This specific advertisement or marketing is
extremely important for the organization or business. World University is expected to be one
of the most important and significant universities for providing online courses to the students.
This would be bringing out the most effective or efficient marketing for all the specific
business processes (Wagner, Beimborn & Weitzel, 2014). The students present worldwide
would be knowing about the various courses they are offering and thus they would be popular
amongst the students.
v) Students Searching: The next important role of the platform of social media is
student searching. They can easily search for their students with the help of this social media
platform and thus their business would be enhanced and promoted effectively (Luftman et al.,
2013). The time consumption is also lower than any other website. No matter where the
student is residing, social media can easily search him or her promptly and easily.
vi) Easy Affordability: Social media does not require any cost for helping the users
and even if cost is incurred, it is absolutely negligible. The easy and simple affordability
makes this platform extremely popular and well accepted by all users (Schnoll, 2015).
Furthermore, this social media is also responsible for reducing the costs of marketing, which
is very much required for any new business. The campaigns for marketing are not required in
this case and thus time is also saved.

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vii) Database Maintenance: The next important role of the social media platform is
the maintenance of database. All the platforms of social media have an in built database,
hence storing each and every information type easily (Bardhan & Thouin, 2013). The
maintenance of this database is not required as it is an in built feature.
These features or roles of social media promote the business model of the World
University.
Recommendations
One of the most important and significant universities for online education is World
University. The students would be extremely benefitted from these online courses. However,
in spite of having these various advantages, they should bring some changes within their
business processes for enhancing the business model of the World University. The most
important recommendation for this particular university is the proper incorporation of risk
management procedure within the business model. When this risk management procedure is
present, the management of the organization would be able to reduce or even mitigate the
various risks of the organization. Furthermore, this particular organization would be having
the risk probability in the business. This will help them in identifying the probabilities of the
risks, thus taking precautions to stop them. The second important recommendation to this
particular organization of World University is the inclusion of several laws, regulations and
compliance in the business. The proper inclusion of any regulation or compliance is vital for
the University. The illegal activities should be mitigated immediately and thus these are to be
checked regularly. Incorporation of information technology is the next important
recommendation to the organization. Data as well as information could be easily stored with
the help of information technology. This information technology or information system

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would be extremely important for the organization. These recommendations would help this
organization in attaining competitive advantages.
Conclusion
Therefore, from the above discussion, it can be concluded that the important or vital
use of any type of computer, system or any particular computing device for manipulating,
storing, transmitting and finally retrieving data to give several competitive benefits to an
organization is called IT or information technology. ICT or Information and communications
technology is the significant superset of the information technology or IT. There are
significantly three major kinds of applications within information technology or IT. These
applications are mainly techniques for processing, applications related to statistics and finally
methods of mathematical manner for the purpose of decision making. Furthermore, proper
simulation of high order thinking is done by information technology. IT management is the
proper management of information technology within the organization and hence diminishing
the overall chances of all types of errors. The above report has significantly outlined the brief
discussion on the case study of World University and thus enhancing the business to a greater
level. This report has focused on the various facts related to the case study with business
processes and social media role in the business model of this university.

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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
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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
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Wagner, H. T., Beimborn, D., & Weitzel, T. (2014). How social capital among information
technology and business units drives operational alignment and IT business
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