Feasibility Study For Implementing An Information System In A University

Components of Feasibility Study for Implementing the Information System

Question:

Discuss about the Business Information Strategies for Libraries and Electronic.

As the education, helps in making the feature leaders and, to achieve better society in the future. Therefore, the education system must be reformed with time to meet the need of the students (Li, Hsieh and Rai 2013). Like, if a university has more than one campus at different geographical positions, then it needs to implement the technology or more particularly the information technology into its campuses so that they can provide the same quality education to all the students in the different campuses (Laurillard 2013).

In this report researcher tries to identify the process of implement an information system by analyzing its feasibility study. In addition, this study also provides the appropriateness of information system from the point of view of business. Moreover, benefits and risks of Information system in business have been also analyzed through this study.

Components of Feasibility study for implementing the information system

Feasibility study or the feasibility study of a project implementation is about checking the viability of a project. The result of this analysis determines whether not to proceed with the idea or a project. Different aspects of a project are analyzed in the feasibility analysis. Like the technical, economical, behavioral etc (Willcocks 2013).

Economic feasibility:  The economic feasibility is also known as the cost benefit analysis. The cost benefit analysis checks whether the project can be implemented with the cost constraints, minimal cost to attain such system, the preferred alternatives. This helps the organization to minimize the cost to implement the information system (Flagg 2013).

Technical feasibility: The technical feasibility checks whether the proposed solution is practical, whether the organization posses the technology to implement the system, do the organization have the technical expertise so that the implemented can be operated or not (Rezaeian et al. 2013).

Operational feasibility study: The operational feasibility tries to find out whether the proposed system can solve the problems of the organization, or take the advantages of the opportunities (Davenport 2013). The operational feasibility of the proposed system not only evaluates whether the system can work though this is the reasons for which the system can fail to deliver(Arms 2015).

Appropriate Information System and Example for the University:

There are different kinds of information systems are available for the organization. Such as Schoolmaster by Olympia computing company inc, eSIS by the administrative assistants limited, Power school by Apple computer inc, AERIES by eagle software,  SASIxp by Pearson digital learning, student management  solution from chancery  software ltd, PLUS series student system etc (Power, Sharda and Burstein 2015).

For the university the appropriate solution for the university will be the PLUs series student system developed by the SUNGUARD pentamation. It is a centralized client server option based on a number of database servers such as Microsoft SQL server. It provides the features like access through the PDA, parental access to the student information, have the data warehouse model, the teacher access center provides access to the grade books and attendance features (Reich and Benbasat 2013).

Appropriate Information System and Example for the University

Benefits and Risks Related to Purchasing and Using New Information System

The newly adopted information system can have advantages for all in the university (like students, administrators, teachers or professors). Due to the automation of the system the material cost including the papers will be reduced, reduction in the human errors and improving the efficiency and the effectiveness (Deng and Chi 2012). The automated system will require less number of labors thus helps in reducing the labor cost too.

For the students, it can help in enhanced interaction with the teacher. Online access to grades, exam schedules, university events.  More over the students can submit their assignments online. 

For the teachers, they can use the information system for automated student attendance, managing the grades of the students, accessing to the forums that are common to the students and parents (Jones, Levine and Pineda 2014). Moreover, the teachers can download and distribute the notes, case studies for the students. Using the systems the teachers can organize the university activities in a better way.

For the administrators, this system can help in easy monitoring of the performance of the employees or the students, detection of the errors in the system, centralized data repository of that enables easy data access and also quick report generation (Zarvic and Wieringa 2014). In addition, this helps in reduction in the data redundancy, people dependency for the tasks.

In addition to all this the university can use the system since it can provide full automation of the processes, availability of data at anytime, anywhere, can have more time  to focus on the strategic tasks.

Risks related to university information system: The implemented information system in the university also has some risks related to it such as

Workflow: since the system is tied up with the daily workflow and the processes then a change or replacement in the system can have a huge impact on the daily operations (Davenport 2013).

Conversion of the data:  universities need to consider what data is to convert and what is to be archived since change in information can cause data loss at the time of conversion (Jones, Levine and Pineda 2014).

Best method for implementing the new system:

The best method to implement the new system is the pilot method. Since the method will implement the system in a department before it is implemented throughout the university. This is a better approach when the organization or the university is not certain about the system that is going to be implemented. Although this implementation takes more time than the other methods, and have higher cost to evaluate the system (Reich and Benbasat 2013). For the new systems, (information system) it worth the time and the cost. The pilot must be designed in such a way that it can represent the total organization. The pilot approach can validate the full application deployment in the organization. Before implementation, the university should identify the appropriate participants (Li, Hsieh and Rai 2013).  Using this approach provides the university to point out the weakness of the system. apparently it seems that the pilot implementation will delay the total process but it provides  improvements in the  process. Using the information system the administrator can ensure the high level of data security of the university data.  The system can also help in administration of the multiple campuses from a central office using the best possible use of the resources.

Figure 1: Pilot implementation

(Source: Jones, Levine and Pineda 2014, pp- 271)

Possible Timeframe for Implementation

Task Name	Duration	Start	Finish	Predecessors
Planning	20 days	Fri 5/27/16	Thu 6/23/16
Arrangement of Meeting	2 days	Fri 5/27/16	Mon 5/30/16
Creating Committee	6 days	Tue 5/31/16	Tue 6/7/16	2
Creating Goals and Objectives	5 days	Wed 6/8/16	Tue 6/14/16	3
Development and initialization of Strategies	7 days	Wed 6/15/16	Thu 6/23/16	4
Analysis	44 days	Fri 6/24/16	Wed 8/24/16
Analysis of current business operations	13 days	Fri 6/24/16	Tue 7/12/16	5
Identification of required changes	15 days	Wed 7/13/16	Tue 8/2/16	7
Understanding the needs of new system	16 days	Wed 8/3/16	Wed 8/24/16	8
Design	54 days	Thu 8/25/16	Tue 11/8/16
Designing of Business Module	25 days	Thu 8/25/16	Wed 9/28/16	9
Designing of User Interface	29 days	Thu 9/29/16	Tue 11/8/16	11
Implementation	58 days	Wed 11/9/16	Fri 1/27/17
White Box Testing	17 days	Wed 11/9/16	Thu 12/1/16	12
Black Box Testing	19 days	Fri 12/2/16	Wed 12/28/16	14
Parallel Run	10 days	Thu 12/29/16	Wed 1/11/17	15
Pilot Run	12  days	Thu 1/12/17	Fri 1/27/17	16

Figure 2: Time Frame of IS implementation in Business

(Source: Created By Author)

Conclusion

As the system can provide automation in the daily operation of the university then it is obvious to change the existing system with the new one. So that the administrator, teachers, students can get a better and efficient service from the university

At the end, summarizing all the topics discussed in the report we can say that using the information system the students can have better interaction with the professors, the administrators can efficiently handle the employees and the professors can provide quality education to their students.

References

Arms, C., 2015. Campus strategies for libraries and electronic information. Digital Press

Davenport, T.H., 2013. Process innovation: reengineering work through information technology. Harvard Business Press.

Deng, X. and Chi, L., 2012. Understanding postadoptive behaviors in information systems use: A longitudinal analysis of system use problems in the business intelligence context. Journal of Management Information Systems, 29(3), pp.291-326.

Flagg, B.N., 2013. Formative evaluation for educational technologies. Routledge.

Jones, S.T., Levine, F.E. and Pineda, E.M., International Business Machines Corporation, 2014. Call stack sampling to obtain information for analyzing idle states in a data processing system. U.S. Patent 8,839,271.

Laurillard, D., 2013. Rethinking university teaching: A conversational framework for the effective use of learning technologies. Routledge.

Li, X., Hsieh, J.P.A. and Rai, A., 2013. Motivational differences across post-acceptance information system usage behaviors: An investigation in the business intelligence systems context. Information Systems Research,24(3), pp.659-682.

Power, D.J., Sharda, R. and Burstein, F., 2015. Decision support systems. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Reich, B.H. and Benbasat, I., 2013. 10 Measuring the Information Systems–Business Strategy Relationship. Strategic Information Management, p.265.

Rezaeian, A., Nejatbakhsh Esfahani, A. and Shirazi Pour, M., 2013. Feasibility study of implementing e-learning and knowledge management related to PNU Iran. Reef Resources Assessment and Management Technical Paper, 37(4), pp.119-123.

Willcocks, L., 2013. Information management: the evaluation of information systems investments. Springer.

Zarvić, N. and Wieringa, R., 2014. An integrated enterprise architecture framework for business-IT alignment. Designing Enterprise Architecture Frameworks: Integrating Business Processes with IT Infrastructure, p.63.