Failure of Real-Time Online Facility - Assignment Example

Online school Failure of “Real-time” Online Teaching Facility Problem & Solution of Online School’s of Delivering Services Writer’s Name 20 October 2011 Table of Contents Introduction……………………………………………………………………………….. 03 Background………………………………………………………………………………… 03 The Problem – Failure of Real-Time Online Facility………..……………………………. 04 Integrated Management Operations of Online School……………………………………. 05 a) Information Technology ……….………………………………………………. 06 b) Process …………………………………………………………………………. 07 c) Finance……..…………………………………………………………………… 07 d) Quality…………………………………………………………………………... 08 e) Customer Care….……………………………………………………………….. 08 f) Marketing ……………….………………………………………………………. 08 g) Operations………………………………………………………………………. 09 Solution – The Last Resort………………………………………………………………… 09 Recommendations…………………………………………………………………………. 09 References…………………………………………………………………………………. 11 Introduction Soaring profits, increased market share, continuous improvements, enhanced customer satisfaction, and above all the most compact, interlinked and integrated management operations have remained the core and the most magnificent values for our online school business since its establishment. As the online school industry is at its growth and development stage, our business has to speed up its pace in line with other competitors. In order for our school to maintain a sound position and achieve a competitive edge against our rival online schools which are operating in this industry, some challenges and key improvements are waiting for our online school management. These major changes and other significant measures require a complete devotion and perfect dedication from the management, administrative department and particularly the Information Technology department to stabilize the performance of our online school and take our pride from good to best in the online school (Linda 1995). Background Everybody was appreciating and praising the performance of our online school before the advancement of technology introduced by our one of the closest competitor in the online school sector. Ever since this improvement has been presented by the competing firm, a steep decline has been observed in the size and magnitude of the market share of our online school. Profits have stuck somewhere, lowering from 8% to 5.5%. Faculty turnover ratio has increased substantially from 4% per annum to somewhat 16% annum. Increased customer complaints received more than 6% from the previous period. Things are pointing a major problem in our processes and demanding a significant solution to overcome that problem. What actually is that problem? How is it showing its effects and implications on the management and other departments of the business? What are the possible remedies to rescue? What would be the consequences of this operation clean sweep? Who is going to gain and who is going to lose? These all critical questions will be probed in the following discussion. The Problem – Failure of Real-Time Online Facility Since the inception, the main focus of our online school has remained on providing the education to our students in a virtually “real-time” online environment. Students always liked and valued this methodology of teaching as it provided them the core benefits that they always needed. This methodology provided the students with an opportunity to interact with their tutors and mentors live on our online web portal, group forum and other live chat and discussion platforms. This helped the students in tackling with their study curriculum related issues with their tutors and share their problems in an online streaming session conducted via our live web portal. Besides the greatest advantages bestowed by this real-time online system, some dark aspects had been the major concern for our administration department, other departments and to be more specific, our information technology department in providing this online facility to our customers. This system was hurting badly the internal processes and operations of the management in various aspects. Frequent power failures, increased number of internet server collapses, high peaking downtime, continuous irritation for tutors and students are the biggest detrimental forces that have caused the company to drown into the deep ocean of troubles and frustrations. The following discussion will be covering the impact of this problem narrowly on distinct major departments of the company that are interconnected with each other and cannot help taking the impact of each other if there is a problem arising in any of the other departments of the business. Integrated Management Operations of Online School The online school consists of seven major departments and other supporting departments. The operations of major departments are very well integrated with each other. These departments help, assist and facilitate with each other to achieve maximum synergy. The departments are: a) Information Technology b) Process c) Finance d) Quality e) Customer Care f) Marketing g) Operations Highlights of failure of real-time online facility; are outlined below in detail with respect to different departments of our online school. a) Information Technology Department As the problem is directly related to the Information Technology department, this has department has turned out to be the most criticized, the most hatred and above all, the most merciful department of our business. Our online school is basically conducting and running its online web-based operations by virtue of the technological support aided by the Information Technology department. Without the technical facilities and online setup provided by the Information Technology department, it would not have been practically possible for our company to carry out the operations of the online school business. The services provided by Information Technology department have the importance of milestone in our online school company’s books. This proposition can never be denied that the Information Technology department has remained the most efficient department of the school before the time this hurdle devastated its fame and reputation ruthlessly (Thierry and Deborah 2000). Frequent collapses in the server which acts at the back end of the website, made the life miserable for the Information Technology department personnel. Their majority of the time is spent in rectifying and fixing the server related issues. The most horrible consequence of recurrent server failures is the prolonged downtime which causes extreme frustrations for both tutors and students as it wastes their precious time. Since several classes are simultaneously conducted in different zones, therefore in case of any disconnection at any place, makes the whole Information Technology department fix the issue. The problem gets more amplified when several disconnections are found at multiple locations as it engages almost every personnel of the Information Technology department. The employees serving this particular department have the implied obligation of staying at their toes to confront with such debacles as the uncertainty level in this area is sky high. The efficiency of the Information Technology department has been badly hurt because of these increasing interruptions, as all the efforts of Information Technology department employees are at fixation of these problems. These hardworking employees are having hectic time because of this issue, resulting in demoralization and lower spirit of work at job. b) Process Department The Process department in our online school has numerous responsibilities including teacher’s record, their number of subjects, class timings, teaching material, students’ progress record, their attendance records and other activities. Due to the frequent interruptions in school’s “real-time” online web based facilities, the performance of Process department has been hampered as this department is facing extreme difficulties in tracking the record of both faculty members and the students. Connections get broken amid the class; as a result the proper records cannot be maintained causing frustration to administration, tutors and the students. Despite of taking the classes on time by the tutors and students, yet their records could not show their actual performances just because of the system breakdowns. c) Finance Department Continuous imperfections and frequent connection failures has devastated the cash flow position of the company. Number of students enrolled in different subjects has significantly declined resulting in a major cut in online school’s revenue. Due to swelling performance of this department, the delays in disbursements are causing frustrations for suppliers, faculty members and the non-teaching staff of the online school. In order to meet the current liabilities of the online school, the administration is presently having to utilize its overdraft facility from the school’s bank which is leading to an increase in school’s interest expense and making the school more risky than ever before as school’s leverage has peaked enormously. d) Quality Assurance Department Quality Assurance department is also facing troubles as the quality of teaching, supervision of teaching activities, quality of students’ learning and grasping abilities, monitoring of non-teaching staff etc, cannot be ranked satisfactory by any means. The standards produced by the Quality Assurance department to check the performance in different areas of online school have turned out to be useless as the current actual performance has reported extreme deviations from the standard and desired performance. e) Customer Care Department Ever increasing complaints from both teachers and students have made the life depressed for the online school’s Customer Care department as they are not at all satisfied by the performance of this real-time online facility. Personnel administering the Customer Care department are feeling enormous stress due to augmented workload. f) Marketing Department Owing to a major decline in budget of online school’s Marketing department, this department is unable to market the services provided by the online school in an effective manner. The branding and advertisement of the online school has been ceased due to lower budgets. At the same time, the strategy to market faulty services is not a viable option for the management of the online school. g) Operations Department Operations Department has the responsibility of integrating the overall operations of the online school. The prime focus of the operations department these days is to interlink and interconnect the needs and requirements of every department with other departments, so that healthier coordination, communication and cooperation among these departments can be maintained. However, due to current problem in the online school’s activity, this department is suppressed with the burden of fulfilling the requirements of every department (Staffan 2007). Solution – The Last Resort After analyzing the strategic options the online school has at moment, the most beneficial remedy is to transform the “real-time” online facility into “upload-download” based web facility (John 2001). This strategy is recently adopted by the competing online school and it has served the firm marvelously as firm’s revenue and number of students; both have increased. The following recommendations will highlight as how can this new measure be fruitful for the online school. Recommendations This activity apparently looks like a passive activity as there will be no live classes for teachers and students. The classes will be pre-recorded by the faculty member and these lectures will be “uploaded” on online school’s website. On the other side, those lectures can be “downloaded” by the students. In case of queries related to studies, the live online web portal will be assisting the students on 24/7 basis. In order to implement this procedure of operations, significant investment is required to transform the old processes into the new ones (Thierry and Deborah 2000). Investments in marketing and advertising areas, upgrading of Information technology area are the key financial aspects that the online school has to eye on more closely. The appropriate time to implement this “upload-download” will be the next academic year as not so much time is left in the completion of this year’s academic progression. References Harasim, Linda M. Learning networks: a field guide to teaching and learning online United States of America: MIT Press, 1995. Print. Mun˜ iz, M. A. “Separating managerial inefficiency and external conditions in data envelopment analysis” European Journal of Operational Research 143 (2002): 625–643. Print. Stephenson, John. Teaching & learning online: pedagogies for new technologies. London: Routledge, 2001. Print. Volery, Thierry. & Lord, Deborah. “Critical success factors in online education.” The International Journal of Educational Management 14/5 (2000): 216–223. Print Waldo, Staffan. “On the use of student data in efficiency analysis—Technical efficiency in Swedish upper secondary school” Economics of Education Review 26 (2007): 173–185. Print. Read More