Analysis of the Case: World University
Discuss about the Private Education Institutions From Different Country.
In this scenario, a number of private education institutions from different countries of the world have come together with the proposal for developing a World University that will provide online courses to the students around the world (Schwalbe, 2015). In this university, all the learning courses as well as the registration processes for the students will be conducted online. Furthermore, the students will be able to register from any country and they will also be able to choose the country that they prefer to graduate from (Schermerhorn et al., 2014). All other features like providing course details, reference study materials, admission forms and others will be provided online whereas the students will be provided with necessary devices like laptops loaded with all required software will be delivered to the students’ addresses.
This report is based on the analysis of this proposal made by the institutions and identification of the problems associated with the proposal as well as possible solutions.
According to the proposal made by the institutions, the World University will be set up for providing online education to the students around the world. In addition to the online university as proposed, there are some additional features that will be incorporated within the system (Boud, Cohen & Sampson, 2014). These features are as follows.
Study Together Loyalty – The senior management wants to introduce a student loyalty scheme in which, if a student introduces the university to another student, the student will receive fee credits that will be added directly to his account. However, the exact value of the fee will depend on the course selected by the student (Laudon & Laudon, 2015). Furthermore, the management also wants to use different agents to sell the offerings of the university to the employers. The payment system will also be through online gateway using PayPal and other credit cards.
Study Resources – As a part of the course, the students will be provided with laptops and online e-books of study resources. The laptops will have all the required software for the course installed within it when delivered (Eason, 2014). The students who have registered for any course will have to pay for both of the resources and will not be able to opt out of these resources after his registration for a course is complete. The laptops will be delivered to the students’ addresses once the registrations and payments are complete.
Analysis of the Proposal
From the proposal, it can be said that the World University has a lot of business potential if the implementations are done in the correct manner. Some of the main benefits and advantages of the proposed system are discussed as follows.
Online Learning – Due to the entirely online learning, the students will not have to visit the classrooms for the lessons. They will just require a laptop and a good internet connection to access the learning portal where they will able to watch the teaching videos posted by various lectures (Avgerou & Walsham, 2017). Furthermore, the students will be able to access the portal from any location in the world. Hence, it is expected that more and more students will be interested and will sign up for the courses and the business will continue to grow over the years.
Loyalty Scheme – The loyalty scheme will significantly benefit the business of the university. As per the loyalty scheme, a student has to refer more students in order to receive fee credits (Van Der Aalst, La Rosa & Santoro, 2016). This will work as a chain and will exponentially increase the number of new admissions to the university, effectively increasing the overall revenue of the university within a very short period of time.
No Physical Operational Costs – The online university will not have any physical operational costs like maintaining classrooms, providing utilities and electrical connections to the classrooms, installation of workstations, desks, study materials and others. Instead, it will only require the lecturers to conduct video lectures and post it in the learning portal using an internet connection (Figliola & Fischer, 2015). It is evident that the overall operational costs will be reduced significantly thus effectively increasing the profit margin. In addition, this system will be able to reach more students than physical classrooms where there are limited number of students.
In spite of all the benefits, there are certain problems associated with the World University. These problems are discussed as follows.
No Appropriate Medium Selected – The first problem that has been identified is that no appropriate medium has been selected by the senior management for undertaking the learning courses (Bryson, 2017). No proposals have been made regarding the development of an online portal for the education and the use of database for storing all the student data and course materials. It is to be noted that the university wants to reach students from around the world and not just limited to a specific country or area. As a result, the amount of student data to be stored by the company database is enormous and requires a suitable medium for storage that will also have accessibility from various locations around the world (Kramer, Kinn & Mishkind, 2015). In addition to the storage, there is also the problem of data management. Manually managing all the student and course data in enormous volumes will require high manpower for which, the company will have to incur heavy costs. Thus a system is required for effective and efficient storage and management of enormous volumes of data.
Identification of the Problems
No Planning on Student Management – It is expected that a large number of students will join the different course of World University. However, there is no proper student management plan developed for the university (Ptak & Schragenheim, 2016). In addition, the company has only estimated the number of students that will join the courses in the next few years and have developed initial plans for the same. However, in order to maintain business in the current market, the company needs to forecast the number of new students accurately and prepare management plan for the same accordingly (Galliers & Leidner, 2014). For instance, let the company has projected there will be 700 new students in the next 5 months but the actual value is found out to be 5000. As a result, due to lack of student management system, the entire online learning course will fail, thus reducing the interests of students in the system. This in turn will negatively affect the business of the company.
Based on the analysis of the problems faced by the university, there are two possible business solutions that will positively affect the business of the university. These two business solutions are as follows.
Cloud Based CRM System – One of the main business solution suggested for the university is the cloud based Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. The cloud based system will provide unlimited storage space where all the student data, administration data, business data and others will be stored without any limitations and restrictions (Khodakarami & Chan, 2014). Furthermore, the cloud based system will provide option for efficient, effective and fast management of large volumes of data without the need for much manual processing. The cloud based system will also ensure that the database is accessible from anywhere in the world using internet connection and hence, any student will be able to access required data from any location (Nyadzayo & Khajehzadeh, 2016). The CRM system will provide the university with a specific business portal that is aimed to provide the users with a huge range of benefits. The business portal will be an online portal where the university will be able to upload all required information, educational contents like videos, online study materials and others (Navimipour & Soltani, 2016). This portal will reach the students in the form of university portal. In order to gain access to this portal, a student will have to register with the university using his email id and his profile will be created. Through this portal, he will be to view various course information and register for a specific course. The portal will also have the option to pay for the course online as it will have payment gateways through which the students can pay using credit card or PayPal. The overall implementation cost for this entire system will be very high but the operational costs will be much less compared to the manually managed system.
Suggested Business Processes / Solutions
Business Analytics – Another important business solution that will be useful for World University is business analytics. Business analytics is a useful business tool that is used to make predictions and forecast based on the changes in the market and other pre-set conditions. Using business analytics, the university will be able to predict an estimated number of students who will register for learning courses in the near future (Eichorn, 2018). While these values are known, it will be easier for the company to prepare suitable management and resource plan for all the students registering for learning courses with the university.
Social Media can play a major role in the promotion of the model to be used by World University. Social medium is a platform where millions of people are connected from around the world. Hence, it is a very good idea to use social media for promotion of the business model of the university. The promotion of the model through social media can be done in a number of ways that are as follows.
Creating Facebook Page – One of the best methods of promotion of the model is by creating a facebook page for the university and boosting its reach by making certain amount of payments. The page should contain all the relevant information regarding course details, benefits and others so that the page visitors can easily know about the university (Greve & Schlüschen, 2018). In addition, through the page, the university can conduct various events and promotions from time to time with rewards such as fee credits if the winners decide to enroll for the courses provided by the university. Creating a group in the same medium can also be effective where existing and new students can interact with each other as well as promote the university among their friends and family members.
Opening Profiles in Business Social Media like LinkedIn – The university can also use business social media platforms like LinkedIn where it can promote its business model and attract students are already active in the same platform (Soltani & Navimipour, 2016). It has been seen that in the past, there has been a lot of new course enrolments and job recruitments through LinkedIn and hence, it can be effectively used as a platform for the promotion of the model.
Conclusion
Finally, the report can be concluded with the summary of all the findings from the study. From the case study, it is seen that different private institutions are joining hands to develop a World University that will conduct learning courses online. Students from various parts of the world will be able to enroll for the courses and choose the country through which he wants to graduate. The senior management has already made plans for several schemes and strategies that include loyalty scheme, student referral system, providing study materials and equipments and others. However, the management has not come up with a suitable plan for overall business framework that will be following for a sustainable growth in business of the company. In order to achieve that goal, the company also needs to consider several business related issues that must be addressed before a suitable business framework is implemented. Some of the proposed business solutions provided for World University include cloud based CRM system and business analytics. Using the CRM system, the company will be able to establish a cloud based database server in which all data and information include student, business, course and other data will be stored. Due to use of cloud, any student or management team member or a lecturer will be able to access the required data from any location on the earth. The CRM system will also provide with a much better and efficient business management system as all the operations will be conducted through the cloud based system. Using business analytics, the company will be able to forecast future of the business and will be able to undertake suitable management plans accordingly.
Based on the analysis of the case study, certain recommendations can be provided as follows.
Develop a Suitable Business Framework – The first initiative that the management needs to take is to develop a suitable business framework for the proposed World University. Although the management has already decided upon certain schemes like loyalty scheme, resources for students and others, they also need to invest more ideas in developing the actual business procedure. This includes promotion of the university through various media, structuring course fees, hiring of lecturers for online teaching of various subjects, procuring online technical resources and equipments and others. This also requires the development of a suitable budget plan so that the company makes the right investments and gain suitable cost benefit from the same.
Development of Cloud-Based CRM System – A recommended model for the university is the cloud based CRM system that will help it develop a suitable IT framework that will also play a significant role in the business of the company. Using the cloud based system, the system users like students, lecturers and others will be able to access course data whenever needed from any location. The CRM system will also provide with a much better and efficient business management system as all the operations will be conducted through the cloud based system.
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