Business and UTS Student Services - Case Study Example

BUSINESS IT CASE STUDY Information system has become a very useful phenomenon in the running of most s and businesses today. Indeed, the advantages that come with having an information system in place in whatever setting a person finds him or herself cannot be underestimated. Today, one of the fastest growing means and trends of information system is the advancements associated with new media, of which social networks are a part. It is in this quest that it has become necessary for students of the identified university to have their own information system that works with the elements of new media to serving their most immediate and pressing interests. To successfully deliver their assigned task, UTS Student Services are expected to possess certain qualities and knowledge, together of which shall be classified as the requirements for them. First, there are supposed to have full knowledge of the functionality and operational processes that guides the use of search engines and search engine editing. By this, the service should have both the software and hardware necessary to turn an existing search account into an effective one that would reach peaks for any search entries that are made (Guo and Sanchez, 2005). What is more, it is required of the service to undertake a cleanup service that involves identifying all data and information about students that may not be considered wholesome and presentable and polishing these up or possibly replacing them with more suiting and presentation information that borders on the academic and career prospects of students. On the part of students, there are a number of requirements that they are also expected to meet. First and foremost, students are expected to have basic understanding of the functionality of the system that is being proposed. By understanding the functionality of the system, students will be in a better position to respond to system managers in a manner that will make the work of the system managers even more effective and efficient. For instance students will be required to avoid posting images and data that are not considered to be presentable. Stakeholders as used in this report refers to all people who have a role to play in the successful planning, implementation, usage and monitoring of the system (Locker, 2000). By this, three major lines of stakeholders will be identified with a brief description of the role that each is expected to play. The first stakeholder is the university authority who is expected to be the initial financiers of the project. The university authority is regarded as financiers because there is an existing system that has been paid up by students, only for it to be rendered and rated effective. Students can therefore not be expected to pay for any extra fees for the new system. Apart from the role of the university as financiers, it would also be noted that the university has a major interest in the project as the eventual opportunities that will be created for students with their employers in the form of employment opportunity rates of graduates from the school can help in promoting the image and name of the university. The next stakeholder group are students, who are expected to be cooperative stakeholders who would ensure that accurate and adequate data needed to produce the best of external presentation of them are given to regulators of the system. Finally, the UTS Student Services are themselves major stakeholders who would be responsible for the initiation and creation of the system. Presently, a problem exists where the student body lacks a consolidated system, which keeps their profile for online purpose and use. Though students have other means in existing social networks and new media to get their profiles going online, these means and systems are not in any way regulated; especially by the university and so it is not possible for students to have any control over the kind of external representation they want to give to themselves in terms of how their profiles show up when searched for in any search engine. Meanwhile, the dominance of technology and for that matter internet has grown so fast that it is dominating all areas of business and labour operations including the hiring and placement process whereby human resource personnel seek information about candidates by the use of the internet (Lutgen-Sandvik, 2010). Apparently, students who do not have very good accounts in their profiles in the number haphazard media that are used would stand the chance of losing out on their opportunities to working with their dream companies. In short therefore, there exists a problem of haphazard student online profiling system that needs to be harnessed into a common system that can be well controlled and regulated to produce exactly what students and school administrators want of their students to the public and outside world. As the name implies, a vivid picture or description of the UTS Professional Net Profiler should be made up of some key features and operational inputs. A rich picture is given below to represent the UTSPNP The System Request Form below may be given to stakeholders. First, the UTSPNP should contain all professional details of students. By this, reference is being made to the fact that once completed, the UTSPNP should be seen as displaying all i. Previous educational institutions that students have ever attended ii. All transcripts of these institutions attended iii. All accomplishing certificates that students left the various schools with iv. Academic and professional courses carried out by students in their present tertiary educations v. Transcript of performance of students in their current educational standing vi. Position of professional and academic interests ever held by students if any vii. Previous working or professional skills possessed by students Apart from the professional data and information that the system must hold on students, another feature that should be seen of the system is that it should be accessible online as the implication of the word ‘Net’ implies in the name of the of the proposed system. With this feature, the UTSPNP is going to be accessible to all who have means to search for a particular student in given medium and search engines. Finally, the feature of the system is expected to outline other key profiles of students that are not necessarily part of their professional status but could be useful for decision making into employments such as date of birth, nationality, languages spoken, hobbies, contact addresses and the like. The system development lifecycle to be used in developing the proposed software will be no different from what has been used in most other synonymous cases of online profiler system development. This means that there shall be the usual phases made up of system analysis, design, testing, operations and maintenance, and evolution (Tourish, 2010). At the planning stage, which is a component of the pre-implementation phase, it is expected the major activities that will be carried out will be a set of well coordinated research and development that gathers as many information on the needs of students that ought to be incorporated into the system as possible. The planning phase should also involve a feasibility study on all aspects of the system development including financial, time and other resource budget. The analysis phase is expected to be more action oriented, meaning it should be made up of more activities including the definition of the problem, setting project goals, breaking goals into specific objectives, identifying stakeholders with assigned roles to the stakeholders and possibly drawing up a scheduler for the project. At the design phase, project managers are expected to be involved in developing a sample structure, otherwise known as mock or miniature system for onward testing (Haye, 2012). Specific activities that will be expected of designers would include creation of screen layouts, preparation of business rules, drawing up of process diagrams and documentation of a blueprint. It is very important that the proposed system becomes one that can guarantee some levels of competitive advantage. This is because the system will be coming in not as the first in its area of service and therefore needs some of these competitive advantages to make their selection preferential for students as against other existing systems (Sullivan and Wyatt, 2010). As a strategy for systems of this nature, it is recommended that the competitive advantages would be structured around features that are totally absent in existing systems or come into existing systems but in a well harnessed manner that the proposed system can take advantage of. With this said and done, the very first form of competitive advantage that is recommended is accessibility of the system. By accessibility, reference is being made to the fact that the system should be available for use by all people to whom the use of the system may matter to. This could include students, university administrators, employers and all other identified stakeholders. Such accessibility will be achieved if the system is formatted in such a way that it is made operational in as many platforms and media as possible. By this, it is being advocated that the system should easily work and work well all platforms such as smart phones, tablet computers, laptops, blackberries and all other new media outlets. Once this is done, the competitive advantage will be scored for students whereby they can be accessed by all people who need their information, particularly employers. The second form of competitive advantage that can be gained in developing the information system is value addition to students. It is said that the absence of advertisement is like trading in the dark. This means that publicity is very important in selling one’s self out to people who may need their services. Unlike what has existed before whereby employers get the wrong notion about students because of the kind of information that are presented about them in their online profiles, there is going to be a new era of competitiveness whereby value is going to be added to students and their profiles by means of the information system that will be created. For the university as a whole, the advantage here would be that it will receive an enhanced pedigree as an institution that has more of its graduates gaining instant placement after school. Failing out on this project will certainly cause the business its hard earned reputation and serve as a hindrance for future opportunities to be opened in a similar area. This is because once the project is successfully delivered, it is going to add up to the achievements of UTS and spice up its curriculum vitae. UTS is also in a position to using its current clients as references and referees in all its future bids and so should the system fail, this opportunity is going to be lost. For the student body and other stakeholders, the failure of the information system would mean that all merits associated with the system will be lost and so the same old vicious cycle of students being denied employment because of their online profiles will continue. REFERENCE LIST Guo F. & Sanchez T. 2005. “Workplace Communication Organisational Behaviour in Health Care” John and Bartlett Publications, p. 77-110. Haye G. T. 2012. Elementary Healthcare through Community Mobilization Programs. United Express Limited: Chicago. Locker, K. O. 2000. Business and administrative communication 5th ed. Boston: Irwin McGraw-Hill. Lutgen-Sandvik, P. 2010. Destructive organizational communication: Processes, consequences, and constructive ways of organizing. New York, NY: Routledge. Sullivan F and Wyatt J. 2010. ABC of Health Informatics. New York: Blackwell BMJ Books. Tourish, D. 2010. Auditing organizational communication: A handbook of research, theory, and practice. New York, NY: Routledge. Read More