You are required to Create a Plan of action, working from the perspective of Olivia Wirth, the executive of Government and Corporate Affairs at Qantas Airlines.
The digital evolution of social media is considered a double-edged weapon. Organizations find it a new chance for public communication with customers and at the same time they feel the fear of losing control over the flow of information disseminated to the public. The technological development resulted in new job tasks to employees to manage the organizational presence in the social media and provide prompt communication to consumers’ activities towards the organization products or services. Organizations need to create communication strategies built on the organizational culture (Linke & Zerfass, 2013).
Management at Qantas Airlines failed to communicate to the customers that is why it needs a strategic information system to enable the management to take the right decision on a timely manner and to provide quality information at the right time to reduce the crisis effect. It is also important to decide which customers are the targeted customers in order to direct the right information to them in specific at the right time utilizing the social media channels (Zizka, 2017).
The strategic importance of information
Qantas Airlines need to gather information from the external environment to be able to acknowledge the changes that affect its business and the consumer changing needs. In order to access information and make good decisions, the information system is needed to enable the management at Qantas to access the necessary information on timely manner. The advances in information technology (IT) assisted in designing and deploying information systems. When management within the organization starts to create relations between variables, and decide the organizational strategy, the implementation of the strategy will achieve the desired goals. Automating the framework at Qantas would facilitate its new strategy and its execution. There are five main variables represented in the support system of the organization, measurements of performance, monitoring system and the knowledge base. The organizational value chain is affected by the information system, also its relationship with its customers and suppliers is affected in a positive way. Information systems enable the organization to positively focus on its strategic orientation, for example, cost reduction and innovation. Information systems utilize the analytical tools in solving complex problems by providing the right decisions based on the information gathered from the external environment (Kumar & Sushil, 2015).
Strategic information systems
Organizations invest in developing strategic information systems to create competitive advantage. Although, building such system is costly, organizations seek to obtain them either by the internal development of the system or by outsourcing them. The acceptance of the end user to the system output is very important (Sooklal, Papadopoulos, & Ojiako, 2011).
The information system integrates various subsystems which function in a harmony to ensure the efficiency of the larger system. Qantas Airlines need to analyze the information required to overcome its latest social crisis on Twitter, through the analysis of the external environment and deciding the component of the information system that fulfills its objectives. As systems vary from organization to another, Qantas Airlines could have its own customized information system that fits its operations, priorities and size. The effectiveness of the information system also depends on the management of it to lead to better decision making process. The quality of the decision making is a function of the quality of the available information. Employee in control of the information system should be professional (Nowduri, 2011).
As the size of business evolve and expand due to the increasing number of goods and services, the information needs also grow and change. The start-up phase of the information system usually produces basic reports, but as the business expands, the managers are in a deep need for more specified and complex reports that relates different variables to each other to assist them in taking the right decision. The information system should produce timely information as quick information about sales, climate change, the consumer needs to take the right action, for example, Qantas Airlines, did not notice the negative feedback on its competition on Twitter on the spot which led the mass negative campaign. The system should be capable to retrieve the required information at a glance, the information should be relevant to the selected subject and the development for the system requires ongoing training to system developers to ensure the system upgrade to the latest technology (Zare & Reza, 2013).
Types of communication
Qantas Airlines need to develop both of the two types of its communication systems, the internal and the external. Its external communication with other governmental entities, customers and suppliers. There are many communication channels which could be face to face or distance communication. The internal communication with the employees takes place through the HR department (Communication Theory, 2017).
The communication system within the organization contains information about social relationships as a result of human interaction. The informed systems approach is considered an internal communication which aims at learning through transferring knowledge in the workplace. The workplace is considered an interactive social system as people’s experiences are shared. The organizational culture is shared among employees through organizational learning process. The organizational goals and priorities should be shared among employees and it should guide the employees’ allocation within the organization (Somerville & Mirijamdotter, 2014).
Crisis information dissemination
Qantas Airlines should have followed the argument of sharing information at a certain level of the disaster could prevent or minimize the negative consequences of it. Organizations may have information but they do not disseminate it or share it to the public. Also, effective knowledge management can control the process of crisis management. Meeting the public needs of information is considered a purpose of information communication (Jiuchang, Bing, Xiumei, & Margaret, 2014).
Information sharing
Information sharing with the public is managed by governmental regulations. As some information is confidential and should be protected, the level of protection varies from country to another. Although the greater the level of information sharing with public the more knowledge is created and the more trust in the more trust is gained from the public in organizations (Grace, 2015).
It is important to build a knowledge sharing across the organizations and across the society as well. Organizations need first to adjust their culture towards knowledge sharing to provide better consumer service and ensure efficiency of its business. IT could be utilized to facilitate information sharing as all types of information is gathered in one accessible database (Peel & Rowley, 2010).
Benefits of information sharing
Information sharing is important in coordinating between the participants of the supply chain of take the right decisions concerning the products and services. Information sharing is also beneficial for the marketing activities as it increases the customer loyalty to the organization. The consumer will gain value and a strong relationship will be built by the organization. Qantas Airlines, could benefit of the idea of information sharing as it needs to gain the customer value after its Twitter problem (Tai, 2011).
Social media
The rapid emerge of the social media assists in information sharing. The influence of the social media is increasing, organizations need to know how to manage social media as a channel of communication. People are grouped in social media, according to their thoughts and interests, which make it easy for organizations to classify them (Fuduric & Mandelli, 2014).
Twitter, is ranked among the most important social media channels as it allows users to send instant messages. It is useful for promoting products and services and engaging people in a marketing campaign (Lee, Tyrrell, & Erdem, 2013). Qantas Airlines chose Twitter to spread its campaign, but it has failed in managing the auto reply message and it missed the timely information regarding the negative feedback of its customers.
Strategic planning
Strategic planning in the public sector is very important, as it guides the organization towards specific goals. It allows leaders in the organization to establish a vision and set performance measures. Strategic planning allows the organization to assess its internal and external environment and defines its weaknesses, strengths, opportunities and threats. Qantas Airlines, lacks the strategic planning that provides it with the required roadmap and enables it to define the threats to manage them and improve its performance. Implement an improved strategy is a critical process that requires labor division. Stakeholders also should be engaged in the strategic planning process concerning the development and implementation phases.
Strategic information system planning
The strategic planning of the organization should consider the strategic information system planning (SISP) to create clear objectives and align the IT strategy with the business strategy. SISP increases the utilization of resource allocation and enhances the organizational responsiveness to organizational changes. Accordingly, the efficiency of the e-government is enhanced and the effectiveness and efficiency of the processes and quickly response to the consumer’s needs (Manoharan et al., 2015).
It seems that Qantas Airlines lacks the strategic planning of SISP as it lacks the appropriate planning and the responsiveness capabilities to the customer needs and inquiries. Technology should be considered in the public strategic planning. It also needs to adopt technology in planning incremental stages to reflect the improvements of technical tools used in the implementation stage.
Benefits of implementing strategy at Qantas Airlines
Qantas Airlines, could adopt Bryson’s (2011) strategic planning process, as cited in Manoharan et al. (2015), as follows:
Adopting the right strategy is the key to success, as it can assist Qantas Airlines in choosing the social networking in an intelligent way. An important successful step is to provide 24 hour service of social media management to avoid the auto reply messages that may contradict the situation (Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2013).
Customer involvement
The customer is involved when he can communicate, participate, interact, and collaborate with the organization in a particular activity. Low customer involvement reflects lack of information about customer needs who is supposed to consume the product or service. It is important to satisfy customer needs and not to introduce a product or service that has no demand as the sales rate will be low and the revenues will deteriorate as well. Customer involvement can happen in different phases of product development as it could happen in the design phase as well as the final stage (Tih et al., 2016).
Regarding Qantas Airlines, it is preferred to involve customer from the early phase of service design to absorb the anger and enhance the company public image, as the development of the service will include the consumers’ opinion. The company may find it more useful to formulate a variety of strategic actions to respond to different customer needs through flexibility.
Qantas Airlines needs to give special importance to the issue of knowledge transfer through its relationships. Also, the cross-boundary transfer of knowledge is important in order to gain knowledge from successful organizations and increase the organizational efficiency. Qantas Airlines could make a strategic alliance with another successful organization to transfer the know-how and overcome its losses and repair its fleet according to the latest technology applied worldwide.
Also, Qantas Airlines could outsource information systems, as the vendor acts as a source of knowledge to the company, in order not to start from the beginning and benefit from the interaction with different expertise (Al?Salti & Hackney, 2011).
Qantas Airlines should realize the dynamic nature of information systems as it requires regular upgrades, according to the latest technology used. Flexibility of the information system is required to match the organizational expansions and to respond to the external environmental changes. Information systems as well as the social media channels need to be monitored and managed by professional employees to ensure the responsiveness, timely and accurate information in shared either within the organization or with the public. Also, information has to be tailored to benefit the management and the public. Qantas Airlines should define its strategic information system in the strategic planning phase to ensure that the objectives of the system fulfill the need for decisions to be taken and stakeholders need to be involved from the early stage of planning to ensure that the right strategy is adopted (Nowduri, 2011).
Conclusion
Qantas Airlines needs to analyze the information required to overcome its latest social crisis on Twitter, through the analysis of the external environment and deciding the component of the information system that fulfills its objectives. The company also needs to develop both of the two types of its communication systems, the internal and the external.
Qantas Airlines should have followed the argument of sharing information at a certain level of the disaster could prevent or minimize the negative consequences of it as people are grouped in social media, according to their thoughts and interests, which makes it easy to organizations to classify them.
Qantas Airlines, lacks the strategic planning that provides it with the required roadmap and enables it to define the threats to manage them and improve its performance.
The company also lacks the responsiveness capabilities to the customer needs and inquiries. Technology should be considered in the strategic planning. It also needs to adopt technology in planning incremental stages to reflect the improvements of technical tools used in the implementation stage. It is preferred to involve customer from the early phase of service design to absorb the anger and enhance the company public image, as the development of the service will include the consumers’ opinion. The company may find it more useful to formulate a variety of strategic actions to respond to different customer needs through flexibility.
References
Al?Salti, Z., & Hackney, R. (2011). Factors impacting knowledge transfer success in information systems outsourcing. Journal of Enterprise Information Management, 24(5), 455-468.
Communication Theory. (2017). Kinds (types) of communication employed by business organisations. Retrieved from https://communicationtheory.org/kinds-types-of-communication-employed-by-business-organisations/
Emerald Group Publishing Limited. (2013). Social networking gets serious: Social networking moves beyond timewasting to become a powerful business tool. Human Resource Management International Digest, 21(3), pp. 6-8.
Fuduric, M., & Mandelli, A. (2014). Communicating social media policies: evaluation of current practices. Journal of Communication Management, 18(2), pp. 158-175.
Grace, J. (2015). Better information sharing, or “share or be damned”?”. The Journal of Adult Protection, 17(5), 308-320.
Jiuchang, W., Bing, B., Xiumei, G., & Margaret, G. (2014). The process of crisis information dissemination: impacts of the strength of ties in social networks. Kybernetes, 43(2), 178-191.
Kumar, A., & Sushil, A. (2015). Modeling organizational and information systems for effective strategy execution. Journal of Enterprise Information Management, 28(4), 556-578.
Lee, W., Tyrrell, T., & Erdem, M. (2013). Exploring the behavioral aspects of adopting technology: Meeting planners’ use of social network media and the impact of perceived critical mass. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Technology, 4(1), pp. 6-22.
Linke, A., & Zerfass, A. (2013). Social media governance: regulatory frameworks for successful online communications. Journal of Communication Management, 17(3), pp. 270-286.
Manoharan, A., Melitski, J., & Bromberg, D. (2015). State strategic information system plans: An assessment integrating strategy and operations through performance measurement. International Journal of Public Sector Management, 28(3), 240-253.
Nowduri, S. (2011). Management information systems and business decision making: review, analysis, and recommendations. Journal of Management and Marketing Research.
Peel, M., & Rowley, J. (2010). Information sharing practice in multi?agency working. Aslib Proceedings, 62(1), 11-28.
Somerville, M., & Mirijamdotter, A. (2014). Information experiences in the workplace: Foundations for an informed systems approach. In Information experience: Approaches to theory and practice.
Sooklal, R., Papadopoulos, T., & Ojiako, U. (2011). Information systems development: a normalisation process theory perspective. Industrial Management & Data Systems, 111(8), 1270-1286.
Tai, Y. (2011). Perceived value for customers in information sharing services. Industrial Management & Data Systems, 111(4), 551-569.
Tih, S., Wong, K., Lynn, G., & Reilly, R. (2016). Prototyping, customer involvement, and speed of information dissemination in new product success. Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, 31(4), 437-448.
Zare, M., & Reza, H. (2013). Management information systems and business. International Journal of Information Science and System, 2(1), 1-8.
Zizka, L. (2017). The (MIS)use of social media to communicate CSR in hospitality: Increasing stakeholders’ (dis)engagement through social media. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Technology, 8(1), pp. 73-86
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