Business processes
Discuss About The Information And Organisational Technology.
Private educational institutions from all over the world have decided to come together and form an online World University. In this online university, the lecturers can teach online from any of the campuses all around the world at any time. The students can access these lectures at any time by just signing in the website. They can interact with the professors with their lecturers and the student can choose to graduate from any country according to their choice. The senior management has decided to develop a StudyTogether loyalty program, which will reward the students who will introduce another student with their fee credit. The application is done online and the payment is done with the help of Paypal or credit cards. The paper will discuss the business management processes by which this model can be enhanced. Furthermore, it will also review the issues associated with emerging technologies and MIS and IT management. Moreover, this paper will also focus on some of the recommendations to remove these issues.
Business process is defined as the group of activities performed by the management of the organization to achieve organizational goals. Manufacturing, marketing, finance, banking, human resource, rewards are some of the examples of business processes performed within an organization. The senior management can promote the concept of StudyTogether loyalty program in several ways (Galliers & Leidner, 2014). E-learning can provide an option to the students to learn anything from anywhere across the world. It allows the students to interact with their faculties at any time with the help of technology. E-books and laptops are required in these program. A fully pre-loaded laptop is sent to the students who have enrolled in this program. The senior management can implement some business processes to increase the number of members of the loyalty program. These business processes are as follows:
The management should provide extensive training to their employees about the different features of StudyTogether loyalty program. This training will allow the employees to promote the concepts of this program to the customers, or in this case the students. They will be able to pitch the concepts of the reward program to the students (Rotolo et al., 2015). The staff must know about the reward structure of the program and how to solve the problems associated with it. The management must come up with new and improved reward structure on a regular interval, and the staffs should know about the updated reward structure. The senior executives should develop a reward plan to attract all groups of students all over the world. They must also know how to use technology to attract more customers as well as retain their existing customers. They must be able to communicate with the students directly at any time of the day and engage with them to build the brand image of the program (Galanakis et al., 2015). Proper training must be given to them, so that they can incorporate the feedback they are getting from the students and improve the conditions associated with the reward program. They must be able to clear the doubts of any students about the details of the program.
Training of the staffs
The senior management can increase the number of the members associated with the loyalty program with the help of advanced technology. Mobile technologies, social media platforms can be used to promote the idea of StudyTogether. These technologies act as a superior marketing platform to promote the loyalty program among the students. Technology will provide the management of the company to collect feedback from the students and use them to improve the loyalty program. The management should use mobile technologies to send any promotional messages to the students via email or any other communication technologies (Schermerhorn et al., 2014). These technologies provide an excellent opportunity to the management to engage with their customers and build a better relationship with them. Using the feedback obtained from the students to develop the program will increase the satisfaction among the students, thus increasing the profitability of the program. Increase in the customer satisfaction will encourage the students to promote the concept of loyalty program among their peers. With the help of technology, the management can attract new potential customers as well as retain their existing customers (Schermerhorn et al., 2014). They can post additional information on their websites and social media account as well so that the students can gain more information about the program.
Management information system is defined as the network of hardware and software working together to collect, store and process information to support the managerial functions performed within an organization (Laudon & Laudon, 2016). Chief Information Officer and Chief Technology Officer of the organization is mainly responsible for choosing which kind of information system should be implemented to achieve the organizational goals. Decision support system, executive information system, and marketing information system etc. are some of the examples of information systems used within an organization. Decision support systems are sued by the management of the organizations to avail a wide range of information and use them to solve problems and make decisions for the benefit of the company. An executive information system is used to evaluate and analyze the reports from various structures within an organization like accounting, human resources etc. Marketing information systems are used to manage the marketing concepts and ideas (Power et al., 2015). Information technology management is defined as the process by which all the computers and other IT resources are managed by the organization according to their needs or goals. With the help of MIS and IT management, the organizations are able to identify their strengths and weaknesses and develop an overall picture of the business processes within an organization (Eason, 2014).
Marketing through mobile technology
MIS also helps them to gain a competitive advantage over other firms in the market and reduce the time taken to make important decisions. With the help of MIS, the management will be able to make correct decisions and reduce the complexities of the system. Despite these advantages, there are certain disadvantages associated with MIS (Van Der Aalst et al., 2016). The maintenance of these systems are expensive and it can provide non-essential information, thus affecting the performance of the organization. Maintenance of these systems can cause a huge amount of time for the firms, thus affecting their performance. Technology can be used to increase the performance of the firm, thus increasing their productivity. Despite technology is used to increase the speed of the performance of the organization, IT systems of the organization have their flaws (Schwalbe, 2015). These systems can be hacked and the confidential data of the company could get lost. Loss of confidential data can reduce the reputation and goodwill of the organization among its stakeholders.
Educational institutes around the world are developing unique loyalty programs for their students so that they can use these programs beyond its usual uses. StudyTogether is an example of these type of loyalty program (Pearlson et al., 2016). With the help of social media, senior management of these private institutions can increase the number of this loyalty program. There are more than 1.4 billion Facebook users and more than 300 million users who use Twitter and other social media platforms. The vast number of users can provide an advantage to the senior management executives of the program. A majority of these users are young students, studying in different parts of the world. With the help of these platforms, they can reach a wider market of the student community. It provides a great mechanism to create a sensation about the new loyalty program by using appropriate hashtags. It is the easiest way to promote the concept of StudyTogether among the students (Goetsch & Davis, 2014). These platforms provide the easiest way to communicate with the students all around the world. Senior managerial executives can also use this platforms to directly engage with students all around the world. The students will be able to provide feedback if anything goes wrong with the loyalty program (Lee, 2014).
Social media is an active place, where people are continuously providing opinions, reviews about different products and services of different companies. The senior management can adjust their StudyTogether program according to the feedback of students, thus increasing customer satisfaction of the loyalty program (Coronel & Morris, 2016). It increases the extent of the reach of loyalty programs. Each student on social media have a significant number of friends on their network, they can promote the loyalty program on behalf of management. These students can be encouraged to share this program by providing better customer service to them and also by rewarding points to them for sharing the concept in their social networks. Promotion of loyalty program like StudyTogether can be done with the help of social media platforms at a low cost, thus increasing the profitability of the program (Kroenke & Boyle, 2015). Developing a positive relationship with the students will allow the management to increase the number of their members as well as decrease the level of customer dissatisfaction (Rowley & Hartley, 2017). It can provide a way to build the brand of the loyalty program, attract new customers towards the loyalty program as well as retain their existing customers (Harmon, 2014). Social media will allow the management to save a lot of time and unnecessary expenditure, thus allowing them to concentrate on how the program can be improved.
Management processes for the information system and information technology
Emerging technology is defined as the most advanced and innovative technologies developed in the recent years. These technologies are developed to increase the competitive advantage of the business organizations. However, there are some issues associated with these new and emerging technologies in management (Hammer, 2015). These issues can be characterized by privacy issues and security issues and ethical issues etc. The legal issues of these technologies lie within the scope of rules and regulations associated with the use of data and privacy of the customers of the organizations. If the technologies used in the organizations are not secure, then the privacy of the confidential data can be compromised. Weak encryption and installing weak firmware may lead to the insecurities in the organization. These technologies can be used to develop false accounts and collect sensitive information of the customers (Certo, 2018). Social media can be used to hack the information of the students associated with the loyalty program like StudyTogether. Their social media accounts can get hacked due to lack of strong security measures (Chang, 2016). Mobile applications can be used send malware to the devices of these students and collect their personal information without their authorization. In this case, the management will be badly affected by these issues as it will decrease the efficiency of this program and it can drive away any new students or customers. It will ruin their reputation and goodwill among the students thus preventing them to attract new student members (Piercy, 2018). Senior management will have to face legal situations if the private and confidential data of the students get lost.
The issues associated with emerging technologies can be removed by installing modern technologies within the workplaces of the organization. Anti-malware technologies should be installed to prevent any security breaches and prevent loss of data from the network of the organization. The employees of the organization must learn how to use the technology to attract new customers and retain their existing customers as well. Training should be provided to them so that they can use MIS systems and IT systems of the organization in a better and effective way. The employees must use this system to gain correct information and increase the performance of the organization.
Conclusion
The paper concludes that the management should train their employees on how to promote the idea of StudyTogether among the international student community. They must also use technologies to attract new members to the loyalty program as well as keep their old members. However, there are some problems associated with these technologies. These problems include security breach and loss of confidential data from the network of the organization. Furthermore, it can be concluded that these problems associated with these technologies can be removed by installing new and advanced spyware and anti-malware software in their computers.
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