The Framework for E-learning Strategy - Dissertation Example

?Table of Contents Introduction 3 Identification of Problems and Prioritization 3 E-marketing Strategies 5 Situation Analysis 5 s 5 Competitors 6 Company 6 Context 7 Marketing Mix 7 Product 7 Price 8 Place 8 Promotion 8 Implementation of e-Marketing Strategies 9 Design and Development phase 10 Budget Proposal 12 Projected Profit and loss statement 12 Selling and Administrative expenses 12 Conclusion 12 References 13 Introduction The paper is aimed towards developing the framework for eLearning strategy report for IT Academy. IT Academy is a private institution teaching IT and IT related subjects. The company is planning to come up with a second campus in Birmingham. The paper will develop strategies for building the framework of this setup. The first part of this report would cover the problems faced by the organization currently and fill form as the base of our research. The second part will develop e-marketing strategies for the organization illustrating the best fit and marketing mix for the organization. The third part would find solution projected at the problems faced and thereby design and develop the strategies highlighted. The next part of the report would consider the budget for the projects and subsequent allocations. Lastly, legal and ethical issues related to the projected are also required to be given importance. Identification of Problems and Prioritization This part of the report discussed the problems that are currently being faced by the company and that would be faced in the setup and implementation of the new center in Birmingham. The IT Academy in its new center intends to open systems wherein they could offer on-line course enrolment and the prospective students could pay the fees online. They need to develop and highly efficient enquiry and student query system that addresses the queries if the student and that had an in-build FAQ section to address frequently asked questions by the students. An uploading and downloading system needs to be developed online at the company website wherein teachers and staff could upload their notes and assignment and students could upload their papers and download notes uploaded. IT Academy for promoting its newly set campus also needs appropriate e-Marketing strategies to continuously promote the academy and the courses offered by it. The e-Marketing techniques when implemented should reflect the strong brand name of the academy and its fundamental power of delivering student courses. The company, at some point of time in future also intends to use advanced technology for delivering its courses to the students. It intends to deliver live lectures with the help of wireless networks so that it could deliver lectures globally at any point of time. This will help the academy to build its brand presence globally and irrespective of the location of the student. But as discussed earlier, for all this to happen IT academy needs to revamp its network with the help of e-commerce technologies and advertise with the help of e-marketing strategies. For solving the problems and meeting the requirements intended by the academy a proper prioritization plan is required by the company. The prioritizations plan describes how the problem solving approach would be determined and which problem is primary and would be solved first. Prioritization of activities is done primarily on the basis of priority of requirements and linking of activities. In my report developing a proper ecommerce model which is linked to the business model of the IT academy is the prior activity. This is because every other activity is basically linked to the success of this activity. This would act as a base of offering on-line courses and also payment of feed online. This will also build an online system that could handle online queries of the student. Also, based on the effectiveness of ecommerce of IT Academy successful e-marketing strategies could be implemented. So revamping of the e-commerce technology in IT Academic will be priority in my report. E-marketing Strategies After identification of problems we need to develop e-marketing strategies that would effectively market the core business and brand of the IT Academy. The first part of e-marketing strategies includes the situation analysis for evaluating the organization’s marketing mix. This would also reflect on the fact that how the organization would balance is online as well as offline marketing techniques and how would they impact the organization. Thirdly, the report discusses the impact of the strategies and their implementation. All these are discussed as follows: Situation Analysis For employing an effective marketing strategy, company needs to do a proper situation analysis of its industry identifying its customers, competitors and the industry in which it is operating. The situation analysis of IT Academy is as follows: Customers IT Academy is a private institution teaching IT and IT related subjects. The company is planning to come up with a second campus in Birmingham. The customers of the company include all the students that intend to enroll for the IT related courses. As the field of IT is becoming vast day by day with new technologies being used in every field for different works, specialized courses of IT are increasing day by day. These includes the newer courses like implementation of IT in supply chain management, ecommerce technologies, ERP, e-marketing technologies and programming etc. So dealing in a vast field of IT the academy has a large pool of customers within itself. The company not only provides campus education but also provides distance education learning and related courses. Exams in that case are taken online and even the results could be seen online. Therefore, with the setup of new branch in Birmingham, the customer base of the company will expand to not only residential customers but also to thousands of those who intends to do courses through distance learning. So IT Academy is looking forward to cater to a large pool of customers. Competitors Every business whether it is education or telecommunication faces fierce competition from its competitors. IT Academy is operating in the highly competitive environment wherein it faces competition from all the educational institutes and universities in the region that offer IT courses. With the company opening up another center in Birmingham, the competition would increase as the academy would now offer online courses on a distance learning mode wherein students irrespective of their residence state could take the courses. In this highly competitive scenario, IT Academy would require outperforming in terms of quality which is the content of courses in this case, price, and ease of access and brand image. The brand image at the new center would be developed subsequently over the years. The colleges like London business school and universities like Harvard pose serious threat to the potential growth of institutes like IT Academy. Company As discussed earlier, IT Academy is a private institute that teaches computing and IT related subjects. . The customers of the company include all the students that intend to enroll for the IT related courses. As the field of IT is becoming vast day by day with new technologies being used in every field for different works, specialized courses of IT are increasing day by day. These includes the newer courses like implementation of IT in supply chain management, ecommerce technologies, ERP, e-marketing technologies and programming etc. The parent company for this IT Academy is a telecommunication company which has earlier operated in the field of education by running a technical college. Currently the academy is operating based on it campus in London, UK and wishes to expand by opening another campus on Birmingham. The company intends to become prestigious in the field of learning thereby setting up a brand name and developing a brand image in the educational industry. Context It is said that education is one industry that usually does not faces the heat of recession. As the company is currently operating in high profitability with a large amount of liquidity, t intends to open up a new center. The primary aim here is to develop e-marketing strategies to support the growing and expansion plans of IT Academy. The strategies implemented would take advantage of the ecommerce technologies implemented by the company. The second part will develop e-marketing strategies for the organization illustrating the best fit and marketing mix for the organization. The third part would find solution projected at the problems faced and thereby design and develop the strategies highlighted. The next part of the report would consider the budget for the projects and subsequent allocations. Marketing Mix The marketing mix would briefly evaluate product, price, place and promotional mix that would be used by IT Academy. This is discussed as follows: Product The product of IT Academy is the courses offered by it. IT Academy is a private institute that teaches computing and IT related subjects. . As the field of IT is becoming vast day by day with new technologies being used in every field for different works, specialized courses of IT are increasing day by day. These includes the newer courses like implementation of IT in supply chain management, ecommerce technologies, ERP, e-marketing technologies and programming etc. So the products are the educational packages and the courses offered by the company. Price The price in marketing mix illustrates the pricing strategy that would be used by the company. As the competitive threat in the educational industry is increasing, the pricing for courses should be such that it could give enough margins to the company to support its operations and attain profitability and could also affect competitive positioning of the company in appositive way. For the new center to be opened by the company, prices of the courses should be kept lower to its competitors to get an advantage low pricing strategies. The company could use differential pricing strategy and cost plus pricing strategy for the product. Cost plus pricing strategy will give the advantage of earning more profits as the course are innovative in the market. But the major issue with this strategy is that the product is still at the nascent stage of the launch and it still needs acceptance from the industry. Place The IT Academy currently operates in London. The company is planning to build up a new institute in Birmingham by the same brand name. But with this, the company is also planning to come up with distance learning courses in IT which could remove the regional barriers for the company in terms of acquiring customers. Promotion E-Marketing techniques forms the primary way of promotion for the company. The company needs to use advertising through internet and sales promotion techniques electronically to promote its courses. These techniques should also be used offline and physically thereby targeting customers that are already in UK. To resort into more aggressive promotion of its funds, the company would need to form user groups at its own portals or at open public forums like Facebook and Twitter so that it can remain connected to its customers. This will also promote marketing initiative of the company through the platform of social networking websites. Advertising is the most successful way of reaching the customers. With the increasing demand of technology products, the number of options for the consumers is increasing day by day. In the current scenario the supply of these products is increasing day by day thereby creating competition among the companies. Implementation of e-Marketing Strategies As discussed earlier that the company would use e-marketing strategies for promoting its brand and courses. The primary e-marketing techniques that would be used by the company are advertising and sales promotion. In the promotion part described above, we have already discussed how the company would use form user groups at its own portals or at open public forums like Facebook and Twitter so that it can remain connected to its customers. Secondly, the company needs to use SEO (i.e. search engine optimization) by Google for marketing its products. This would help the prospective customers to link to the company website as soon as a search relating to any company SEO content is done in the Google. This would be very effective in creating awareness of the brand name of IT Academy and promoting the courses that it is offering. Another way of reaching the customers for IT Academy is through sales promotion. This is the second most important tool to be used to promote courses by an educational company in this increasingly competitive market. The primary focus of sales promotion in this market would be consumer oriented. By the integration of both the above mentioned market communication tools, companies can successfully promote their products in the markets. Due to the highly competitive nature of the ecommerce industry, the only thing that stands to make you stand out of the competition is to be consumer centered. All other elements like quality technical staff, money and technology could be sourced from external companies. So the message for marketers is clear: the purchasing climate and the products change quickly. In order to be competitive, marketing executives must employ technology to develop low-cost customer-prospecting methods, establish close relationships with customers, and develop customer loyalty (Kalakota and Whinston 1997). Design and Development phase For meeting the requirements of the strategies of the company, development of ecommerce pages is required. Whiles the internet was at its infancy, it was a privilege for large corporations and government agencies. The individual could rarely get easy-to-go access to it. This was the case up until 1991 when the internet was commercialized to allow for anybody who could afford it to gain access. Since then, several businesses, both small and big started establishing presence on the internet. Through 1994 and 2000, there was a tumble in the general dot.com and this affected activity of ecommerce enterprises leading to the demise of ebusiness like webvan and digiscents. Nonetheless, since 2000, the ecommerce industry has flourished in exponential terms adding value to both investors and consumers interest alike. Their volume of usage has being more paramount than most other things that the internet offers in recent times with revenues in billions accruing to owners of these businesses. The HTML pages are as follows: Budget Proposal Projected Profit and loss statement 2011 P 2010 P Sales 9,100,000 8,300,000 Less: Cost of Sales 810,2400 7,501,600 Gross Profit 90,7600 70,8400 Less: Selling and Administrative Expenses 203,000 10,9000 Profit Before Interest and Tax 704,600 50,9400 Interest 0.00 0.00 Profit before tax 70,4600 50,4900 Tax @ 30% 21,1380 15,1470 Profit after Tax 49,3220 35,3430 Dividend Paid 100000 100000 Retained Profit 39,3220 25,3430 Selling and Administrative expenses 2011 2010 Advertisement Cost 350,000 150,000 Sales Promotion Costs 150,000 200,000 Campaign Costs 100,000 100,000 Distribution Costs 20,000 20,000 Other Miscellaneous S&D expense 84,600 39,400 Conclusion The paper was aimed towards developing the framework for eLearning strategy report for IT Academy. 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