alumni relationship management with cloud computing...

Alumni Relationship Management with Cloud Computing : investigating

CRM and cloud computing solutions for managing alumni relationships

A study submitted in partial fulfilment

of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Science in Information Systems

at

THE UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD

by

YOONSANG LEE

September 2011

II

Abstract

Background: Alumni are very valuable resources to higher institutions, in terms of

recruiting new students, promoting the university and funding. However, many universities

are deeply challenged in maintaining alumni relationships and tracking lost alumni.

Aims: The aim of this dissertation is to determine an appropriate alumni relationship

management (ARM) strategy to maintain the relationship between alumni and their

universities as well as tracking lost alumni, by investigating existing customer relationship

management (CRM) principles alongside the cloud computing technology.

Methods: An iterative development research methodology, design research, was used in

the development of the system, based on interviews data retrieved from eleven participants

including alumni, lecturers and university alumni administrators. Two prototypes were

created of its characteristics that had to pass through the traditional developmental process

of requirements, design, development, and evaluation for each prototype.

Results: From the literature review, it was discovered that based on the huge success of

social networking services in binding relationships, a development of a cloud-based ARM

system would deliver the desired research outcome. A prototype was created that fulfilled

that requirement. Then, it was observed from the interviews that up-to-date alumni

information and having an ARM system with in-built social networking features have been

regarded as the most critical factors which the final prototype appropriately sorted out.

Conclusions: It was concluded that maintaining the relationship between alumni and

university is crucial. While social networking sites are valuable resources to have active

user information and the potential to reach other alumni, a connection with social

networking sites and an attractive ARM system could be very helpful to maintain their

relationship. For future work, based on the several feedback that were received during the

interviews, possible issues of cloud computing and legal statements should be dealt with, as

the application is involved with sensible data of alumni.

III

Acknowledgment

First of all, I want to give all the Glory to God for a successful completion of my master‘s

degree. I also want to thank my parents who have supported me all the while and given me

the opportunity to study abroad. For completing my dissertation I want to specially thank

my supervisor, Dr Miguel Nunes, whose support and advice throughout the process gave

me the encouragement to work harder and the fact that he was always ready to give new

guidelines. I also have to thank my girlfriend, Ilyoung, who waited patiently throughout

this one year and gave me the happiness to go forward. Then, all of my friends who gave

me valuable support in several ways, that without their help I wouldn‘t have been able to

reach the level where I am today. Finally, all the interviewees who participated in my work

are very much appreciated.

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Table of Contents

Abstract ..................................................................................................................................................................... II

Acknowledgment ................................................................................................................................................... III

Table of Contents ..................................................................................................................................................IV

Table of Figures ................................................................................................................................................... VII

Table of Diagram ................................................................................................................................................. VII

Chapter 1: Introduction ......................................................................................................................................... 1

1.1. Research Background ............................................................................................................................... 1

1.2 Aim ................................................................................................................................................................. 2

1.3 Research Question and Objectives .......................................................................................................... 2

1.4 Summary of Methodology ........................................................................................................................ 3

1.5 Limitation and Practicalities ..................................................................................................................... 3

1.6 Dissertation overview ................................................................................................................................ 4

Chapter 2: Customer Relationship Management ............................................................................................. 5

2.1 Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 5

2.2 CRM ............................................................................................................................................................... 5

2.2.1 Definition .............................................................................................................................................. 5

2.2.2 Evolution ............................................................................................................................................... 6

2.2.3 Adoption ............................................................................................................................................... 7

2.2.4 Strategies ............................................................................................................................................... 8

2.2.5 Benefits................................................................................................................................................ 10

2.2.6 Challenges in CRM .......................................................................................................................... 11

2.3 CRM in Higher education ....................................................................................................................... 13

2.4 CRM for alumni ........................................................................................................................................ 13

V

2.5 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................................. 14

Chapter 3: Cloud Computing ............................................................................................................................. 16

3.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................................ 16

3.2 Cloud computing definition .................................................................................................................... 16

3.3 Cloud Computing Technology Concept .............................................................................................. 18

3.4 Benefits of Cloud Computing ................................................................................................................ 20

3.5 Cloud Challenges ...................................................................................................................................... 21

3.6 CRM with Cloud computing .................................................................................................................. 23

3.7 Cloud Computing in higher education UK.......................................................................................... 24

3.8 Cloud CRM and Alumni ......................................................................................................................... 25

3.9 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................................. 27

Chapter 4: Methodology ..................................................................................................................................... 28

4.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................................ 28

4.2 Design research ......................................................................................................................................... 28

4.3 The Outputs of Design research............................................................................................................. 29

4.4 Research Design in the context of the dissertation ............................................................................ 31

Chapter 5: Prototype ............................................................................................................................................ 32

5.1 First Prototype ........................................................................................................................................... 32

5.1.1 Requirements analysis ..................................................................................................................... 32

5.1.2 Design .................................................................................................................................................. 35

5.1.3 Development ...................................................................................................................................... 37

5.1.4 Evaluation ........................................................................................................................................... 39

5.1.4.1 Findings ............................................................................................ 40

5.1.4.2 Discussion ......................................................................................... 41

5.1.5 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................................... 43

VI

5.2 Second Prototype ...................................................................................................................................... 43

5.2.1 Requirements analysis ..................................................................................................................... 43

5.2.2 Design .................................................................................................................................................. 46

5.2.3 Development ...................................................................................................................................... 49

5.2.4 Evaluation ........................................................................................................................................... 51

5.2.4.1 Findings ............................................................................................ 52

5.2.4.2 Discussion ......................................................................................... 52

5.2.5. Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 54

Chapter 6: Data Collection ................................................................................................................................. 55

6.1 Data analysis of the interview ................................................................................................................ 55

6.2 Interview script .......................................................................................................................................... 56

Chapter 7: Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 57

7.1 Summary of the project ........................................................................................................................... 57

7.2 Reviewing objectives ............................................................................................................................... 58

7.3 Difficulties .................................................................................................................................................. 59

7.4 Future work ................................................................................................................................................ 59

Reference .............................................................................................................................................................. VIII

Appendix 1 ........................................................................................................................................................ XVIII

Appendix 2 ........................................................................................................................................................... XIX

Appendix 3 ............................................................................................................................................................ XX

VII

Table of Figures

Figure 1: Users and providers of cloud computing adapted .................................. 17

Figure 2: Cloud layer based on analysis of work .................................................. 19

Figure 3: ARM platform connected with social networking sites on the cloud .... 26

Figure 4: Reasoning approach in design research circle ....................................... 29

Figure 5: Sheffield alumni test page ...................................................................... 38

Figure 6: Social networking page in the ARM system.......................................... 38

Figure 7: A page for response income messages................................................... 39

Figure 8: An opt-in dialog for the ARM application in Facebook ........................ 49

Figure 9: Search result of a professor in the ARM application ............................. 50

Figure 10: Communication between alumni and professor in the ARM system .. 51

Table of Diagram

Diagram 1: Use case diagram of the first prototype in the ARM system.............. 34

Diagram 2: An activity diagram showing the communication

between the university ARM system and a social networking site ............... 36

Diagram 3: Use case diagram of the second prototype in the ARM system ......... 45

Diagram 4: Activity diagram showing the process opt-in function ...................... 47

Diagram 5: The activity flow of an in-built social networking feature in the ARM

system ............................................................................................................. 48

Chapter 1 Introduction

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Chapter 1: Introduction

1.1. Research Background

Every year a huge number of students graduate from various higher education institutions.

These higher education institutions provide the students with the necessary level of

sufficient education for their career in the very competitive business environment upon the

graduation. However, maintaining the relationships between graduates and universities has

remained a great challenge. This is because the students no longer require the higher

education service anymore when they leave the university (Hilbert et al. 2007). Barnard and

Rensleigh (2008) state binding alumni should be top priority for any higher education

institution because of the great benefits they provide. They say that the alumni of a higher

institution could be the most beneficial resource that contributes to the institution socially,

strategically, and financially. For higher education, alumni can help to attract potential

students, by their participation in guest lectures, which is not only beneficial for their

current careers but also provides the opportunity to interact with students. This could also

improve the reputation of the university and increase the amount of funding. Another

benefit is their feedback which could provide a basis for an improvement of their courses

(Matlay, 2011). Pinar et al. (2011) state that higher education institutions, in a bid to

adequately survive in this present highly competitive world have turned to branding. It is,

therefore, of paramount importance that universities begin to see their students as

customers. Finally, tracking and managing the huge number of alumni has become

impossible without the technical support. An increasing number of universities are adopting

similar customer relationship management (CRM) principles because of its proven success

in managing and tracing student recruitment effectively (Zastrocky et al., 2007; Seeman

and O‘Hara, 2006).

The background of this study is also due to the increasing interest in the emerging cloud

computing technology. Cloud computing provides a more efficient way to run application

on the Internet (Peng et al., 2009). It is one of the fastest growing areas in the Information

Communication Technology environment (Gupta, 2010). The main advantages of cloud

computing are; cost reduction, higher storage capacity, better maintainability, and easy


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accessibility (Nair et al., 2010; Armbrust et al, 2009; Grossman, 2009). These benefits

show a high potential for traditional IT organisations to adopt cloud services.

1.2 Aim

This dissertation intends to determine an approach to maintain the relationship between the

universities and alumni. In order to conduct this study, CRM which is a well known

marketing approach, will be examined so that professional analytical and rigorous strategies

in the business or commercial sector can be applied to the educational sector. Therefore, a

new term, Alumni Relationship Management (ARM), is used for this study to reflect the

customer relationships management in the higher education environment.

The aim of this dissertation is to determine an appropriate ARM strategy to maintain the

relationship between alumni and their universities as well as to trace lost alumni, by

investigating existing CRM principles alongside the cloud computing technology. This

attempt came from the background that CRM has valuable business strategies to bind

customers and cloud computing can provide numerous advantages to any information

system implementation.

1.3 Research Question and Objectives

In order to narrow to a more accurate and explicit definition the dissertation can be

summarised into the following research question.

Can CRM strategies with the aid of cloud computing be used to maintain a long term

relationship between graduate students and their Alma mater and reinstate lost alumni?

Objectives

To satisfy the research question, the objectives described below have to be achieved.

● To examine the theoretical aspects of CRM that includes the overall understanding,

benefits, challenges and its use in higher education.

● To examine the theoretical aspects of cloud computing technology that includes the

overall understanding, benefits, challenges and its usage in combination with a

CRM system as well as the use in higher education.


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● To identify a suitable strategy that can find lost alumni.

● To implement and evaluate an ARM system that performs CRM function in the

cloud computing environment.

● To recommend a solution of how ARM can be efficiently applied to managing the

relationship with alumni in higher educational institutions.

1.4 Summary of Methodology

An iterative development research methodology, or so called design research is employed

in this research (Owen, 1998). This methodology is especially suitable for this research

because it was generally designed for research projects that involve some developmental

processes. It is based on the theory that new knowledge about the problem can be gained

during the developmental process of an artifact. It makes use of the conventional

information systems development life cycle process. The development is completed first,

and then the artifact is tested while critical attention is paid to the whole process. This is

iterated over and over again until the system is either complete or resources have been fully

exploited. It has both an inductive and deductive approach by suggesting a theory retrieved

by existing literature and from this theory it develops into specific details. An in-depth

discussion of the methodology will be dealt later in Chapter 4.

1.5 Limitation and Practicalities

The three month research duration was a huge limitation in this research. It was extremely

short to complete the project as it involves a development of an artifact as well as the data

collection of diverse stakeholders. In addition, the scope of this study is restricted to the

United Kingdom (UK) because the characteristics and educational system politics of

universities are too diverse to be presented in this research. The research was conducted in

Sheffield, UK. The cost was low because this dissertation is based on literature and the

implementation of the artifact could be performed without any expenses.


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1.6 Dissertation overview

Chapter 1 - Introduction: This chapter highlights the background of this study and

identifies the problem that the domain is facing. It focuses on the question raised in the aim

of this research as well as the objectives that the research has to fulfill. A brief description

of the methodology, limitation and practicalities are also presented.

Chapter 2 - Customer Relationship Management: This chapter presents a review of relevant

literature in CRM written by many scholars. The widely used concept in the business sector

can be transferred to the higher education sector and thus contribute to the theory building

for this study.

Chapter 3 - Cloud Computing: This chapter presents a review of relevant literature of the

emerging cloud computing technology. Cloud computing is the basic technology on which

the proposed artifact would benefit from. The theoretical investigation should also help to

build the theoretical basis for this project.

Chapter 4 - Methodology: This chapter introduces the theoretical aspects of the

methodology. It describes the reason of the selection of the design research methodology

followed by a detailed description, along with the outputs that has to be considered for the

implementation in this project.

Chapter 5 - Prototyping: This chapter outlines the entire development process of the

artifact including requirements analysis, design, evaluation, findings and discussion. Two

prototypes were created and each of them followed that development process.

Chapter 6 - Data Collection: The method of the data collection process and the interview

script are presented in this chapter.

Chapter 7 - Conclusion: This chapter summarises the entire research and reviews all the

objectives that was defined at the beginning of this study. It illustrates the future work and

difficulties that were encountered in this research.

Chapter 2 Customer Relationship Management

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Chapter 2: Customer Relationship Management

2.1 Introduction

The following chapter describes a review of relevant scholarly literature concerning

customer relationship management. It begins with the definition, and then progresses to

examine the evolution of CRM. CRM evolution is the significant insight of the educational

context, because of its dominance in the corporate sector and the little exploration of its

impact on the academic sector. Other aspects of CRM that will subsequently be examined

include, CRM strategies, its adoption, benefits and challenges. This information was

sufficient to support the consideration by adapting CRM in higher education and could be

applied to see the potential performance in that area. It illustrates CRM in Higher Education

and describes the novel area of CRM for Alumni. These will help deliver the basis for a

specific suggestion to build the theory of this dissertation.

2.2 CRM

2.2.1 Definition

Customer relationship management is a broadly used marketing approach that consists of

strategies that have been proven to be efficient to manage the customers over the years. It

has its origin in relationship marketing which was introduced in the 80‘s from Berry (1983,

cited by Payne and Frow (2004)). In the following years, numerous studies have sprung up

in this area regarding the importance of concept and recommendations to the business

practices. Although, it has been widely accepted and well adhered to in the business sector,

there still exists no universal definition that describes this widely used term (Lin and Xu,

2009; Payne and Frow, 2005). Swift (2001 : 12) defines CRM as a business strategy that

tries to understand and influence the customer behavior in order to improve customer

profitability, loyalty, acquisition, and retention. Ryals and Knox (2001) characterise CRM

as customer retention and a relationship development approach and on the other hand,

Peppers and Rogers (1995) view CRM in a more technology driven metamorphosis rather

than a set of strategies that involves the management with customers.


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According to Buttle (2009 : 15):

―CRM is the core business strategy that integrates internal processes and functions, and

external networks, to create and deliver value to targeted customers at a profit. It is

grounded on high quality customer-related data and enabled by information technology‖.

He tries to cover all the core attributes together and define a global definition for CRM. As

a matter of fact, the emerging CRM concept has grown with every new IT advancement,

thus creating new types of services and resources (Grant and Anderson, 2002; Pepper and

Rogers, 1995).

2.2.2 Evolution

In the late 1980s, the first CRM solutions appeared in the market (Feng, 2008). It started off

as database solutions tailored by vendors like Clarify, Onyx Software, Oracle, and Siebel

Systems for marketing purposes. These solutions, then, evolved to emphasise automation

and standardise internal queries to winning, servicing, and maintaining customers. These

software packages laid on the analysis of sales leads in order to keep consistent service to

their entire product line. However, Xu et al. (2002) state that even though these CRM

applications enhanced the companies‘ needs, it was only affordable for big companies and

was difficult to maintain.

In the middle of 1990 the Internet emerged and provided more advanced technological

avenues for CRM. This changed the market for CRM as well as the business requirements

related to customers in the corporate sector. Reynolds (2002) states that the Internet has

allowed the businesses to be able to track consumer patterns, provide new outlets for

promotion, establish new sales channels and foster better relationships with their customers.

In addition, customers were able to communicate with companies directly via the Internet,

rather than having a middle man or buffer to reach the company (Parvatiyar and Sheth,

2001). Significant changes to the traditional CRM solution were in the advanced

technology in their systems; the improved storage capacities, fast performance of

increasingly sophisticated data analysis, and cost reduction of IT resources. The technology

simplifies the addition, modification and the retrieval of the information so that customer

information analysis became more reliable. This trend gave companies the opportunity to


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build a closer relationship with their customers (Payne and Frow, 2004). Furthermore, the

use of client-server architecture in the existing CRM solution has decreased and big

software vendors moved to provide their software on the web. This enabled more

opportunities for small and medium enterprises (Xu et al., 2002).

In the beginning of the 2000‘s, a new market called e-CRM emerged. E-CRM solutions are

related with database management, e-mail management, chat functionalities and knowledge

management etc. It stands for electronic customer relationship management (e-CRM) and it

is the latest paradigm of CRM (Scullin et al, 2004; Fjermestad and Jr, 2003). It is more

efficient than the traditional CRM systems due to its automated processes. Ahmad and

Chowdhury (2008) state that e-CRM is a combination of the classical CRM system and e-

commerce which refers to the performance of a firms business activities online. E-CRM

enables businesses to offer better product information and services with cheaper prices and

less effort to their customers than ever before. With this advantage companies are able to

increase their capital and improve their quality which results in higher customer satisfaction.

The Internet has made the customer more independent. Thus, e-CRM providers can offer

self-services functionality on their web page rather than an employee consulting to each

individual customer (Ahmad and Chowdhury, 2008).

2.2.3 Adoption

CRM is a useful tool to manage information about current and potential customers. It helps

to respond to their needs and build a combination of business processes (Karakostas et al.,

2004). As a matter of fact, Band (2008) states that companies invest heavily in CRM to

increase the productivity of their workers and to improve their experience with customers,

all in the bid to survive in the fast changing business market. However, adopting a CRM

solution is a big challenge for many companies. A survey by Band (2008) generally

illustrated that companies evaluated their CRM poorly or lower than the average in all

categories; marketing, customer analytics, customer service, indirect sales, customer data

management, e-Commerce, customer strategy, technology infrastructure, field service,

people management, and direct sales. This is due to the insufficient conceived strategies

that were designed to reduce the cost or increase the revenues of the company.


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CRM can be adapted from a simple to a highly complex form. The simplest form can be a

link to a ―Frequently Asked Question‖ (FAQ) page, send email newsletters, or a call center

to respond directly to their customers. A more complex form is the implementation of a

customizable merchant service or a virtual community (Karakostas et al., 2004).

Karakostas et al. (2004) also recommend that CRM implementation involves three sides.

The first one is the internal side that deals with the customer databases. The other is related

with the interaction of customers; e.g. home banking. The last one is a system that interacts

with business like ordering service with other business via Internet.

Finally, Karakostas et al. (2004) advises the following points to be well considered when

adopting a CRM

● Acquiring a new customer cost five times more than keeping an existing customer.

● Competition does not only arise from existing players in the same industry, but also

from other players in various other business sectors.

● Satisfied customers can contribute indirectly to the company through positive word-

of-mouth.

● With the emerging e-CRM customers are much easier to reach but also easier to

lose by its competitor

2.2.4 Strategies

Customers are the key drivers of the success of any business or organisation. As a result,

management has to adequately recognise their very important role. In the past, many

corporations did not consider customer satisfaction as an important factor and this led to the

loss of customers due to their dissatisfaction and firms experienced difficulties in an

attempt to win them back. Nguyen et al. (2007) pointed out that the success of the CRM

solution depends on the strategy chosen and the implementation process. The strategies can

be listed as follows:

Identification of their customer

Identifying customers is an important technique that has to be considered before

implementing a CRM solution. The company has to identify the right customers who would


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be the most profitable to the company and become loyal in the long run. A commonly used

method of identifying customers is the customer-centricity model (Kumar et al., 2006).

This approach segments groups of customers into similar attributes and tries to maximize

the benefits they gain from their customers and the potential profits of a long-term

relationship. Another method of identifying customers is to create a profit and loss (P&L)

strategy for their customers (Nguyen et al., 2007). This approach allows companies to

calculate the amount of resources they have consumed and have to allocate to retrieve the

greatest profit. In addition, the amount of service, price and discount can also be calculated.

The format of this strategy is:

―Customer profit = gross revenues-(customer allowances)-(credits and rebates)-(product

costs)-(channel costs)-(cost-to-serve)-(administrative costs)‖ (Wreden, 2004, cited by

Nguyen et al., 2007 : 107)

Hence, it is crucial for enterprises to begin by identifying their target customers in order to

strategically direct all CRM efforts.

Selecting the appropriate channel

According to Suh et al. (2005 : 50) a channel is ―the route, path, or conduit through which

products or things of value flow, as they move from the manufacturer to the ultimate user

of the product‖. There are many channels available for reaching customers. It is therefore,

important for companies to know the right channel as well as consider the appropriate

strategies to maximise the use of the channels. Moreover, it is important that organisations

regularly evaluate the channels that are available and suitable for them. For instance, many

companies recently started using the Internet as a new channel because of the benefits it

presents such as low cost and accessibility. However, Nguyen et al. (2007) state that the

recognition of a conflict in their channel is not difficult; the challenge lies in improving the

process by using a new channel to their existing environment.

There are three popular channel strategies suggested by Payne and Frow (2004);

Mono-channel provider strategy. This strategy is based on one channel that interacts with

the customer. An example of this case is the First Direct Bank in the UK. They used only


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the telephone channel to communicate with their customers, but today they provide online

services as well. These days many companies use the Internet as a single channel

environment not only in business to business (B2B) but also in business to customers

(B2C). A representative case is Amazon. However, Berman and Thelen (2004) state that a

multi-channel strategy would strengthen the ability that different channels may complement

each other.

Customer segment channel strategy. This approach offers different customer segments with

different types of channels to interact. A company may operate both in a market for

business and consumer. In this case, they will use different channels to appeal their service

to a specific market segments. For instance, Zurich Financial Service uses a telephone

contact center for 18 different groups of customers because they have different needs and

attitudes. Peterson et al. (2010) advises when segmenting customers in different groups,

employees should have easy access to their identification, supported by necessary tools in

order to satisfy them with any touch point.

Channel migration strategy. This method deals with migrating customers from the existing

channel to another one. It sees the potential of a new channel that might be more suitable to

serve the customers in a different segment in order to save more costs or raise their

customer value. Sullivan and Thomas (2004) state that companies often use the price to

encourage consumers to migrate to a lower cost channel. Originally EasyJet, a low cost

airline, solely sold their ticket via telephone, but now they provide ticket through their

website in the online market.

2.2.5 Benefits

There are numerous benefits that can be obtained by the adoption of a CRM solution.

Among many advantages, therefore, some essential benefits of CRM are suggested by Bock

(2008). These are: identification of key customers, developing efficient relationships with

customers, and establishing customer segments.

The first benefit of a CRM tool is the identification of their most promising customers in its

organisation. Payne and Frow (2006) state that targeting their most key customers are one

of the most important tasks in efficient management. Many companies earn their substantial


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income from some particular customers, mainly in the B2B sector. According to Bock

(2008) this is the 80/20 rule where 20% of their customers can increase business profits up

to 80%. In order to reach this condition, companies need a well established IT environment

that can keep all the necessary information up-to-date to use it in their marketing

department.

Upon the fulfillment of these prerequisites, companies are then able to develop an efficient

relationship with their customers. They can retrieve the data quickly, respond faster to their

customer needs, and satisfy customer desires while boosting revenues by saving cost and

time (Rigby and Ledingham, 2004). This development is a crucial task for businesses

because identifying current and potential key customers provides more valuable

information to the company, so that they can send special product information or superior

services. This advanced CRM technology makes it easier to contact and acquire customers

for the company.

Finally, a CRM solution allows customer segmentation. Companies can easily distinguish

or identify the various segments to which a particular customer belongs to and build

strategies on it to address them more efficiently (Payne and Frow, 2006). This is extremely

reasonable as organisations have to deal with numerous customers, more suitable in the

B2C market rather than in B2B. In addition, Frow et al. (2011) state that segmenting is

useful to characterise their buying behaviour and economic attractiveness. Thus, it

contributes to increase the communication value with their customers.

2.2.6 Challenges in CRM

CRM provides useful business strategies that enterprise need to survive today, but it has

some challenges which have to be understood in order to fully derive its benefits.

According to the report of Economist Intelligent Unit (2007), 86% of 114 executives, all

around the world, respond that CRM solutions will be important over the next three years.

However, among them around 40% do not have even a proper CRM strategy in place, 44%

said that they had an ―acceptable‖ result, and 22% were disappointed of their use. There

might be numerous reason of CRM failure (Foss et al., 2008), but Rigby et al. (2002) state

that it is common that most success comes from a good strategy rather than vast


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investments on the technology. They say it is crucial that employees understand what they

have to do and why, before implementing the system. In addition, another challenge in

CRM observed by Reichold et al. (2004) is the performance measurement. The

performance measurement quantifies the effectiveness and efficiency of past transactions.

This is challenging when diverse relationships like marketing, sales and services are

involved. This means, it is difficult to create the qualitative nature to financial results.

In particular, with the growth of the Internet and matured technology, CRM has become

more and more complex. In addition, even though Internet based CRM solutions come with

numerous advantages, such as real time access or mobility, there are new emerging issues,

Johnson (1999) states that customer‘s expectations have increased with the growth of the

Internet, thus companies have to learn to perform their activities in that level. For instance,

if the server is too slow or Internet speed cannot support the performance, the company will

lose their customer. Furthermore, the advanced technology makes the company more

dependable on CRM solution, this will be a huge risk if the application suddenly fails

(Rigby et al., 2002).

There are also dark sides of CRM implementation. For example, information misuses,

company which uses the CRM solution has to collect detailed information about their

customers in order to provide more satisfied services. This however may lead to

information misuse by anyone that may gain access to the data. Frow et al. (2011) stated

that often companies purchase or sell customer data without their permission. In addition,

with the growth of Internet collecting customer individual data has become much easier.

This could lead to a planned campaign that can target specific customer behaviour. Another

dark side can be privacy invasion. Because companies have access to all their sources in the

customer database, sensitive information such as their behaviour, interest or transaction

records can be observed. With this information companies are able to categorize and

analyse more about their customers‘ priorities. This could lead to a closer relation, but

which is not agreed by their customers (Frow et al., 2011).


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2.3 CRM in Higher education

Recently, it has become common that a lot of universities and colleges adopt CRM

solutions for managing students to their program. This has brought the need of a

technological support in institutions such as high speed of Internet broadband and large

amount of database storage capacities. Bedigian (2006) states that the principle of CRM can

be applied to universities or colleges but it is still far behind the corporate sector. However,

it is true that more and more higher educational institutions are recognising the importance

of CRM capabilities. Seeman and O‘Hara (2006) state that student satisfaction to the

programs and services of a higher education institution, can be greatly affected by the

capabilities of CRM solutions. In today‘s competitive market universities have to prepare

themselves with marketing and strategies in order to survive like in the business world.

Bejou (2005) states that it is now obvious that higher institution considers students as

customers. Consequently, Nair et al. (2007) state that the more organisations centralize

their focus on its students, the more CRM usage has to be promoted. In fact, many

educational institutions have adapted CRM for student administration and recruitment

processes. The theory of CRM can be applied from student enrollment to the post-

graduation. CRM is involved in student registration, marketing, transcript and academic

support services (Seeman and O‘Hara, 2006). Furthermore, the use is not only for

managing the relationship with students but also other internal tasks of the university. For

example, managing department staffs or sharing information within the university. This

shows the extended usability of CRM in higher education which helps the fast

identification of risk that students are facing or prevention of complaints.

2.4 CRM for alumni

In today‘s competitive world higher education institutions have to deal with a vast number

of alumni because each year a number of students graduate from their university. In order

to manage the huge number of graduated students effectively, universities require an

advanced level of technical support. They need some solution like the widely proven

success of CRM techniques which is implemented in the business sector. This is because

the alumni can also be regarded as customers to the higher institution and they have a high

potential of being future resources for their universities (Bejou, 2005). Based on CRM


14

principles, it has been proven to be much easier and more effective to retain an already

existing customer which in this case is the enrolled students than to recruit new customers.

According to Barnard and Rensleigh (2008) alumni relationship management is a very

crucial task for higher institutions. They therefore imply that a strategy to adequately bind

alumni will be required, as they could be the most beneficial resource to an institution, due

to the numerous amounts of resources they can provide in terms of finance, social influence

and strategy. This is why the need for an effective CRM implementation is vital for higher

education in managing their alumni. In a survey of Bedigian (2006) an increasing number

of alumni now turn to their previous universities for a number of reasons including career

guidance, further education, networking opportunities than merely finding old classmates.

Adelaide (2008 : 1) states that ―communication is the most critical element in a Network‘s

efforts to build and sustain membership‖ because it will help to promote a number of

various activities e.g. events that are pivotal to a networks growth, but these activities also

have to be accompanied by effective communication to encourage their participation.

According to Petrus and Azri (2005), most European universities have separate alumni

relationship offices because the majority sees the relationship with their alumni as highly

important. They state that the promotion of the university, recruitment of new students and

tracking of alumni are the major reasons why they are interested in an alumni relationship

rather than the potential valuable donations from the alumni as is the case with a lot of

universities in the US. In other words, the EU universities strongly believe that the

communication aspects are the most important and since the universities already have

relevant data about their current students from their corresponding university profiles, this

could be extended for communication purposes with the students even after they have

graduated.

2.5 Conclusion

An extensive examination of CRM from both the business and higher educational

perspective has been performed with major focus on the business sector rather than in the

higher educational area due to the availability of more grounding literature. However, a

valuable standard has been provided for adoption to the higher education sector. In addition,

the important role of the CRM concept in managing students for universities and how it


15

could be applied for their alumni was discovered. The basis for the theory building of this

study has therefore been provided from a critical consideration of the data gotten from the

literature.

Chapter 3 Cloud Computing

16

Chapter 3: Cloud Computing

3.1 Introduction

This chapter provides an in-depth literature review of the emerging cloud computing

technology. It starts with the definition, concept, benefits and challenges of cloud

computing. Then, it reviews the relationship between CRM and cloud computing and also

describes how it is used in the higher education sector. However, the scope of cloud

computing in higher education is limited in the UK. Finally, the last section Cloud CRM

and Alumni acts as a theoretical foundation for the entire dissertation.

3.2 Cloud computing definition

Cloud computing is a relatively new term that has become popular in recent years. The term

―Cloud Computing‖ has sparked an abundant amount of interest in the area of Information

Technology infrastructure. Thus, numerous researchers have tried to characterize and

define the new term but still confusion remains about its exact definition (Armbrust et al.,

2009). Recently, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST : 2-1) (2011)

announced a concise definition that covers the general aspects of the cloud computing

technology:

―Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a

shared pool of configurable computing resource (e.g., networks, servers, storage,

applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal

management effort or service provider interaction.‖

Youseff et al. (2008) state that cloud computing is a mixture of existing technology, but

Yang and Tate (2009) argue that there is a clear inheritance from older models like grid

computing, cluster computing, service computing, and ubiquitous computing. Furthermore,

Armbrust et al. (2009) characterize cloud computing as hardware and system software in a

data centre that delivers services over the Internet.


17

According to them, there are three new changes from the hardware perspective in cloud

computing:

● Computer resources can be used infinitely on demand.

● Hardware resources can be increased only when it is required.

● The resources can only be used for a specific time (e.g. using the storage for a day,

using a processor for an hour).

A major change in the economic and technological perspectives of cloud computing is that

it is now possible to offer such services to utilize computing in hours or days rather than to

have a long-term negotiated contract. Cloud computing therefore allows for a tremendous

change in the current IT infrastructure (Armbrust et a.l, 2009).

Another term that has to be understood in cloud computing is Software as a Service (SaaS)

(Dubey and Wagle, 2007). SaaS is a service that is mostly provided online via a Web

browser. Instead of installing software on an individual machine, SaaS installs the software

in a central server as common software for all users and provides a sign up that gives access

to the software. This has the advantage of maintaining and installing the software more

comfortably and provides simplicity for version upgrades as it can be managed from a

central server. Moreover, end users are able to access the software anytime, anywhere all

around the world (Dubey and Wagle, 2007). Cloud computing provides all above

mentioned advantages and gives the opportunity to utilize computing. Figure 1 illustrates

the new layered architecture in cloud computing.

Figure 1: Users and providers of cloud computing adapted from Armbrust et al. (2009)


18

SaaS providers can provide services to SaaS users by using the hardware resources from a

cloud provider. SaaS providers can also be SaaS users, thus being recursive. For example, a

property provider can be a user of Google-Maps services. This provides numerous small

and medium enterprises the opportunity to implement SaaS applications without

provisioning their own data center. Thus, Armbrust et al. (2009) describes cloud computing

as a sum of SaaS and utility computing.

3.3 Cloud Computing Technology Concept

As described above, cloud computing is difficult to describe in one definition, but different

definitions from various scholars emphasise a common structure of concept. Figure 2

illustrates the layer of the cloud computing concept. SaaS is in the top layer which includes;

CRM application, Google Docs, Microsoft Web Office, Salesforce.com etc. The second

layer is platform as a service (PaaS). This layer offers a development environment so that

companies can customise or build their application from an existing platform on the

Internet. Applications can be developed with programming languages like Java, Python or

PHP but only deployed on a provider who supports their languages (Peng et al., 2009).

Examples of PaaS that are currently available in the market include Force.com, Microsoft

Azure, Google App Engine, and Oracle Cloud Strategy. The next tier is the software

infrastructure as a service (SIaaS). This level offers the possibility to manage data online.

There are software products such as Simple database and Simple Que Service from

Amazon as well as SQL database from Microsoft. The last level of the cloud architecture is

the Hardware infrastructure as a service (HIaas). Enterprises are able to use the low level

infrastructure online so that the physical layer such as CPU and memory can be access

through a remote network connection. A representative example of this layer service is the

Amazon Elastic Cloud Computing (EC2) (Amazon, 2011). EC2 can be imagined as a huge

data center where users have access and control to the underlying physical hardware

instance remotely via network access.


19

Figure 2: Cloud layer based on analysis of work from Petkovic (2010)

Cloud computing can also be classified in the perspective of its development, localisation,

and maintenance (Petkovic, 2010).

Firstly, the classification from the point of its development can be interpreted in three views.

● Public Cloud - This is a cloud computing service that is available in the consumer

market. (e.g. Google App Engine, Salesforce.com, Amazon EC2, Microsoft Azure)

● Private Cloud - This type of service is limited to private customers either as an

individual or a specific group. The cloud provider can use a private network or the

Word Wide Web which can be served by an internal or external IT provider. (e.g.

big companies, hospital, governments, universities which often deal with sensitive

or private data use this type of service)

● Hybrid Cloud - This service consists of a private and public cloud that are kept

independent, however this combination is done with standards allowing for the

transplant of data and applications (Peng et al., 2009).

Secondly, cloud computing can also be classified based on the location. The source can

either be internal or external. Internal clouds are located indoors and external clouds comes

from outside but can use a public or private cloud (Nair et al., 2010).


20

The last classification deals with the maintenance. It can either be done from the in-house

or it uses an outsourcing organisation for their maintenance. Ahmed and Raja (2010 : 190)

state that by outsourcing ―the confidence of end user can be won partially by the guarantees

of service provider and use of cryptographic techniques‖.

Before adopting a cloud computing service, an organisation should consider their needs and

desires that fall into any of the above classifications that will be most appropriate for them.

Private cloud is appropriate to see the internal work-flow and to manage the security

guidelines but not efficient in the economic scale. Public clouds have the advantage in the

economic perspective but have a lot of issues of security. Therefore, it is reasonable to use a

private cloud when the company deals with a lot of sensitive data. However, Sungard (2010)

states that this could probably change in the near future as technology continues to evolve.

3.4 Benefits of Cloud Computing

As cloud computing provides numerous advantages, it has leaded the consumer market

with a variety of available services. The following describes the general benefits that can be

gained by using cloud computing services.

First of all, the price model of cloud computing has several advantages. As enterprises have

to pay only for the time which the server is being used, a lot of expenses of the capital are

reduced (Peng et al., 2009). In addition, the barrier to switch to a cloud computing

infrastructure is low and the cost to scale up their capacity as demand is relatively cheaper

than the traditional model (Gupta, 2010).

Secondly, one of the huge competitive advantage in cloud computing is the scalability.

Dealing suddenly with a huge amount of data can easily be managed, which could be

difficult in a traditional model (Grossman, 2009). For example, if the company has a large

event with a lot of new users their services would see a potential upswing in their loads.

Cloud computing would be a good option here as it could be scaled up and down with

requirements.


21

Thirdly, the security in cloud computing comes with a lot of issues as the data is stored by

another company (Ahmed and Raja, 2010). However, there are also advantages in the

security level of cloud computing. Reputable cloud providers try to keep their service

secure and safe. They have strict privacy policies in order to have the credibility of their

customers and market. They use rigorous security measures that can authenticate the user

with cryptographic methods. In addition, cloud subscribers are always able to encrypt their

data and store it to their provider sides. Velte et al. (2010) stated that this way of data

storing can be more secure in some cases than it would be stored on a private server.

Fourthly, because the data is shifted to a third party, the IT department of the company has

less burden and can concentrate more on important tasks related to their business. Moreover,

less manpower needs to be employed for that low level work. Particularly, outage of

networks which is always a huge challenge for the IT staff, can be offloaded to the cloud

provider (Peng et al., 2009).

Finally, in most cases when new technologies emerge a variety of different companies

move into the market to supply these new services. In this case users are confused or have

some doubts about these new service providers. However, in cloud computing the

pioneering companies were those who already have a good reputation in the IT sector

(Velte et al., 2010). Such companies include Amazon, Google, Microsoft, IBM and Yahoo

who are established in this field to provide reliable services.

3.5 Cloud Challenges

Although, cloud computing enjoys great operational and economic benefits, it comes with

certain issues as the technology is still emerging. Some of them are uniquely related to

cloud computing, others are from the traditional computing topics but which has a vast

affection in this area. The following issues do not apply only for cloud computing but are

relevant for its adoption.

Latency issues. Latency is the delaying time for a request that is made by a subscriber

(NIST, 2011). Normally, it includes the time of at least one round trip on the Internet. This

means, it measures the time from the request message of the subscriber to travel to the

provider till the time it comes back to the subscriber. This time is generally not a number


22

but it refers to a range, failure, or configuration errors. This issue is difficult to control

either from the provider or subscriber side. In addition, Wan (2010) states that there are

some Telecom Network workloads which are latency sensitive, thus a distributed cloud

service is incapable. Therefore, a profound analysis to its environment is curial.

Data synchronisation of off-line data is a big challenge in cloud computing (NIST, 2011).

Without Internet connection computing resources are useless. Thus, it is important to have

the ability to synchronise the document or processed data for use when the user goes offline.

Vital requirements for this are; version control, collaboration in groups, and

synchronisation of other aspects within a cloud. In addition, Gupta (2010) states that for

some highly transactional files, high speed access is required and cannot be provided by

public cloud Internet connections.

Although, cloud computing has the advantages to reduce huge amount of operation cost,

there are some risks in the economic aspects (NIST, 2011). For example, there is the risk of

insolvency. Normally, with one information system the product can be used continuously,

even though the provider goes bankrupt. However, for companies which uses their cloud

solution from an outsourcing resource that depends on real time data transactions, huge

damages can be incurred if the cloud business goes out. In this case those companies need a

hybrid cloud solution or a redundant cloud so that the company does not go down from a

single cloud computing provider. As a matter of fact, the cost might be more expensive

than having their own data center.

Among many other issues the information security is the very critical issue in cloud

computing as the data is served from the third party (Grossman, 2009). Kim et al. (2010)

stated that the multi-tenancy nature, serving several clients in one server, could lead to loss

of control of the underlying infrastructure and the unintended sharing resources. This is

why many organisations are wary of storing their valuable data in the cloud. In addition, as

the network is connected to the World Wide Web, the risks of security or errors are

relatively higher than a non-networked application. Also, it is not only the attacks of

hackers, viruses or worms that can take down a server but also there are earthquakes that

lead to damages to the undersea cables. Gupta (2010) stated that threats like fire, storms or


23

natural disaster can always happen to physically stored data. Thus, it is important to know

how the cloud provider will respond or which guarantees they offer for such situations.

3.6 CRM with Cloud computing

Today, CRM has not changed much in its core functionality and that is why its vendors try

to include as many new features, accessories and pricing in order to retain their customers.

Cloud computing is one of the new approaches and it encompasses a lot of the modern

techniques used today for CRM. Petkovic (2010) states that the SaaS model is best suited

for companies that have a lack of the performance of their CRM functions or companies

that want to outsource some of its core business operations. However, if an organisation

desires to integrate a complete solution from hardware instance with a lot of applications

that execute all their business tasks, then the answer is cloud computing. For example, a

company might have an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system or supply chain

management (SCM) system, this is difficult to integrate with a SaaS solution. But by using

a cloud computing approach the company could develop their CRM system on the

hardware instance in the cloud and would have more possibilities to customise their

application. In addition, Petkovic (2010 : 368) also states that ―this new field of

development which refers to the cloud CRM application is the social line‖. This is also

known as social CRM. In this model, customers, suppliers and potential customers are able

to communicate with the cloud CRM application to external social networking sites like

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.. Another advantage of the use of CRM with social

networking sites, as stated by Mohan et al. (2008 : 237), is that ―There are number of open

source social networking engines are available, which can be customised according to one‘s

need and can be plugged-in to their existing applications". This means that a company

cloud CRM system could be connected to a social networking site and communicate with

those users. Furthermore, the user‘s friends list in the social network can connect the

company to another party of potential customers. However, the organisation could also add

a private social networking capability in their CRM application like Salesforce.com‘s

Chatter service which allows employees to collaborate more efficiently at work

(Salesforce.com, 2011a). By using such social networking features for their in-house CRM

system the information can be spread much faster, be more private, and secure to their end


24

users. In this model users would be able to follow other co-workers, groups of other

departments or information.

3.7 Cloud Computing in higher education UK

Higher education is currently faced with the task of managing increasing amounts of data

requiring large amounts of resources. With the opportunities of cloud computing available

institutions that run their own data center have the advantage of improving their data

transactions efficiency. In addition, it will give higher education the opportunity to focus

more on teaching rather than maintaining software application and complex IT

configurations (Mccrea, 2009). Furthermore, Sasikala and Prema (2010, cited by Mircea

(2010)) state that a governmental involvement could stabilise the adoption of a cloud-based

infrastructure. In the UK, JANET, a government founded academic network, offers a

100Gbit/s backbone network and serves more than 18 million users (JANET, 2010). This

network is connected to all education and research areas in the UK. JANET provides a high

access Internet capability and is responsible for operating, maintaining the network, and

developing new technologies. For example, if the university wants to join their computer

with a machine in the US and simulate an event, this cannot be achieved if the network is

slow. The network in JANET consists of a backbone which is connected to regional

networks with fiber optic infrastructure. This enables higher education the highly reliable,

high bandwidth and a competitive advantage to other universities abroad. The network is

maintained daily and monitored for constant upgrades in the future as new technologies

appear. In addition, Hicks (2009) states that a number of universities in UK have adopted

Google Apps into their system because of the disappointment of their in-house email

system when dealing with high demand from students and cost reduction.

HEFCE (2011) states that the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) will offer the

opportunity for cloud computing services through the UK so that higher institutions can

manage their data in a separate house, host application, and share in a data center in 2012.

This will give universities and colleges a realistic alternative to their IT policy and a strong

competitive advantage to improve the research quality. JANET (2010 : 7) states that:


25

―Valuable work continues in this area and studies have shown that shared data centres

offer the potential to save the sector 100 million + pounds over 15 years while improving

services, resilience and environmental efficiencies‖.

To narrow the opportunity, the University Modernisation Fund (UMF) supports universities

and colleges to boost the cloud program in the higher education sector by providing huge

amounts of funding (HEFCE, 2011). They will invest up to 10 million pounds to build a

shared data center through the UK. Through this huge amount of support higher education

can profit from continuous purchasing, less implementation, and the cost for housing

servers. In addition, while there are issues of privacy in the public clouds, using JANET as

their cloud service provider will ensure that the data and information can be managed in a

more secure way for higher education in the UK.

3.8 Cloud CRM and Alumni

Based on the knowledge drawn from past literature on CRM and cloud computing, it is

logical to implement a similar model to higher education institutions, to solve the problem

to maintain the relationship between alumni and their universities as well as tracking lost

alumni. Therefore, a cloud ARM platform could be proposed.

The significance of an ARM platform cannot be over justified as cloud CRM allows for the

benefits of advanced business strategies, the addition of social features with efficient

collaboration by its users and real time connectivity from mobile devices all around the

world.

The social network features for example allow for status updates by a user which can be

seen in real time by people in the network. Some other user can interact with this status

update in a number of ways and hence can incidentally lead to the establishment of better

relationships between people in the network (Mohan et al., 2008; Deng et al., 2009). Social

networking has had an impressive adoption by users worldwide, with the advent of sites

like Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, because the ability to connect and reconnect people by

these sites was very impressive. Therefore, a cloud CRM using social networking features

will be a viable solution to bind universities and alumni together. Enders et al. (2008) also

justify this by stating that one of the success factors of social networking sites is that it


26

enables its users to find and reconnect with their former classmates or friends that they may

have lost contact with over time. Thus, the integration of the social networking features in

the cloud CRM would help to find the lost alumni. In addition, the classical CRM core

capability would be a great use of strategy which could maintain the relationship. All this

core capability could be managed in one interactive platform.

Cloud CRM techniques can be used by higher education institutions to facilitate the

management of alumni relationships, reduction of high costs, reduction of maintenance

problems, more private and confidential collaboration as well as an increased security.

Another benefits of cloud computing is it can contain a large number of users on the

Internet and the alumni would have the chance to work with a large amount of data in the

same time with a lot of users.

To prove the hypotheses, an ARM application will be developed to test the result. It should

identify alumni and linked to a social networking site that runs in a cloud-based IT

infrastructure. Figure 3 illustrates the conceptual idea of this hypothesis.

Figure 3: ARM platform connected with social networking sites on the cloud

Cloud


27

In conclusion, from the points stated above, it can be said that because of the attractive

social networking features, CRM strategies, and cloud computing technologies the cloud

ARM might prove to be a huge success in binding alumni after-all.

3.9 Conclusion

An exhaustive study of cloud computing was performed and a theory was proposed that

was deductively investigated from the Cloud CRM and Alumni sub-topic. The theory for

the dissertation was retrieved from chapter 2 Customer Relationship Management and

chapter 3 Cloud computing literature review and is stated as follows:

The integration of a cloud CRM to a social networking site could help to reinstate lost

alumni and maintain their relationship more efficiently. This can be referred to as the cloud

Alumni Relationship Management platform.

Chapter 4 Methodology

28

Chapter 4: Methodology

4.1 Introduction

This chapter outlines the methodology that has been undertaken in this research. There are

generally two approaches to research: inductive and deductive (Saunders et al., 2009). The

inductive approach involves developing theories based on collected data while the

deductive approach collects data in order to draw conclusion and validate existing theories.

However, in this research both inductive and deductive were used because of the nature of

the applied methodology. Also, in information systems research, there are three main

methods of investigation: quantitative, qualitative, and design research (Mojtahed, 2010).

The quantitative approach involves developing numerical representations of the collected

questionnaire data that can better help the understanding of the area of study and allow for

predictive inference while the qualitative approach involves developing themes for better

understanding of the case study that can be retrieved in a form of interview data (Bryman,

2008). The adoption of design research in this study is further explained below.

4.2 Design research

An iterative development research methodology, design research (Owen, 1998), was used

for this dissertation. It is based on the theory that new knowledge about the problem can be

gained during the developmental process of an artifact. There are many different types of

methodologies used in the field of information systems for research purposes, however,

Fang, (2010) states that the design research methodology is a widely used research

approach in this area. Therefore, considering the characteristics of this dissertation, it was

appropriate to adopt this method for this project. This is because, several studies exist about

higher education with CRM, but a study that combines cloud CRM with alumni proves to

be a novel area. Moreover, since this research has been identified as one that will involve

an implementation of an ARM system, this methodology was chosen as the most

appropriate. Furthermore, design research was especially suitable because it involves an

iterative approach of analytical techniques in a sequential process which is a crucial process

in development. Figure 4 describes the implementation process of this methodology.


29

Figure 4: Reasoning approach in design research circle from Fang (2010)

Design research usually begins with developing an awareness of the given problem and

since it is an improvement research technique due to the fact that it involves solving

problems and improving performance, a solution can be easily suggested. The suggestions

are obtained from previous knowledge of the problem area. Then, it goes to implement a

prototype in the development phase. If the prototype fulfills the requirements the product

should be partially or completely implemented in the evaluation phase. However, because

the process is based on an iterative approach, changes during the development are flexible.

This means, after fully implementing the product a new suggestion enables the process to

be circulated repeatedly. Finally, the project terminates with a conclusion.

4.3 The Outputs of Design research

Even in the design research there is a variety of outputs that lead to a lack of consensus.

March and Smith (1995) suggest a widely accepted approach of four types of outputs.

Constructs: These are a set of definitions that arise from the conceptual analysis of the

problem/solution domain. It can be said to be the basic units that adequately define the


30

problem domain. These constructs are refined throughout the design process cycle and they

may possess a bigger construct set than that of an equivalent empirical process because a

conventional working design represents a large number of entities and their relationships.

For the output use cases has been used in this stage. However, for this dissertation only a

brief description of use cases were demonstrated with the support of a use case diagram.

A model is a stated expression of relationships among constructs as related to the goal of

the design process. It is made up of propositions and statements of how things are and how

they can be solved. Unlike natural science research theories that focus on fact, design

research focuses more on situated utility. For this output an activity diagram has been used

to model the propositions and statements.

A method is a systematic technique or a way that a task is performed. It involves the use of

constructs to produce a model of the solution statement. The design research method gives

an implicit expression of the problem/solution statement in the form of constructs. The

Force.com developer platform was used here and will be explained in detail later in the

development phase of the first prototype.

Instantiation: This is an articulated output of a design research according to March and

Smith (1995), and as the name implies, it is more or less a realisation of the constructs,

models and methods in operation as a working artifact in the environment. March and

Smith (1995) show that an instantiation may be developed even before an extensive

knowledge about the area is attained which in technical terms may refer to a complete

articulation of its underlying theories. This only puts more emphasis on the proactiveness

of design research. The Sheffield alumni platform which was developed on Force.com

platform is the output.

In addition to the widely accepted theorised outputs of design research mentioned above by

March and Smith (1995) another output as postulated by Purao (2002) was identified as

better theories. It is believed that the process of design research can lead to the

development of better theories or the development of new theories. The iterative nature of

the design research process can be responsible for this in the sense that the researchers will

observe from each iteration better ways of expressing the problem/solution as constructs. A


31

realisation of this output was the second prototype and the future work which was remained

in that prototype.

4.4 Research Design in the context of the dissertation

According to the nature of the methodology this project has an inductive and deductive

approach. The awareness of the problem is first triggered from the needs of an efficient

ARM system and emerging cloud computing technology. This was then reviewed by

literature that is related in this area. Subsequently, a suggestion was provided based on the

theoretical part that leads to the development phase which is the inductive part of the

methodology. From this suggestion, two prototypes were developed. Each prototype was

implemented according to their requirements, the product was evaluated by conducting

interviews, which is the deductive part. Finally, the finding of the achievements produced

by this dissertation was ready to be discussed.

Chapter 5 Prototype

32

Chapter 5: Prototype

This chapter describes two prototypes of this project. These two prototypes include the

whole life cycle of the design research methodology. The first prototype discovered a

critical foundation of identification on alumni information which leads to the development

of the second prototype. However, because of the limited time available for this research,

the second prototype could not be perfectly implemented although the attempt and the

possibility of having the potential of an attractive ARM system were gained.

5.1 First Prototype

The first prototype development was based on data from a series of practical analysis and

identification of needs which can be referred to as the requirements analysis. It was also

strongly based on issues that have been extracted from the research question and literature

review.

5.1.1 Requirements analysis

From the literature review, a new theory was formed that suggested the integration of a

cloud CRM with a social networking site for the purpose of reinstating lost alumni and

maintaining relationships more efficiently.

During the requirements analysis phase, it is important to highlight the key issues and

problems that this dissertation is expected to encapsulate. In order to adequately highlight

the problems, the current circumstance of the alumni relations will be evaluated.

Nowadays, the competition between higher education institutions has been increased so

immensely that the roles of alumni relationship management become more crucial. Petrus

and Azri (2005) pointed out that most European universities isolate their alumni

management; that some even might have a separate alumni relations office, and only 8% do

not have a well structured alumni management office or anyone in charge of alumni

relations. This implies that the universities have begun to see the importance of alumni

management and have started to use the alumni office to maintain their relationship in a

more professional way. The development of a solution to identify lost alumni has become

Chapter 5 Prototype

33

very essential in order to boost the current situation of alumni relationships in higher

institutions.

Technically, there are huge costs involved in managing an application in-house. Beside the

application, it also needs a lot of drivers, a data center with office space, complicated

configurations, bandwidth, servers, databases, and the list goes on. In addition, when a new

version of the software is released, the system will have to face new problems and

challenges. Therefore, cloud computing technology was chosen as an effective solution not

only for small and medium but also for huge scale universities to give less effort in their

adoption of a new Information Systems.

In order to establish a connection between the system and the social networking platform,

an intensive study of their API was required.

After analysing the data from the current situation, the requirements of the ARM system are

specifically addressed as follows:

Functional Requirements

● The proposed ARM platform needs to include some level of social network in order

to bridge alumni and their Alma mater, because social networking sites are widely

used and could be a valuable tool to attract lost alumni.

● A social networking page should be created in order to communicate with the

alumni effectively. Although it is certain that the university may have an alumni

web page, but it was assumed that most alumni generally would first go looking for

any such web presence on social networking sites. This is because it is a well

known fact that numerous organisations run and update their most recent news on

popular social networking sites.

● The ARM system should be directly connected with a social networking page. A

user interface that would populate the retrieved feeds was required to enable that the

alumni office administrator see messages on his screen without having to login first.

● A function to respond to the retrieved feeds on the social networking page was

essentially required.

● Users should be able to log into the system.

Chapter 5 Prototype

34

Non-Functional Requirements

● Generally, a system which is based on a client server based model is partially

wasteful of physical resources and the proposed system should be scalable. This

means a cloud-based IT infrastructure had to be available.

● A real-time communication and synchronisation with the alumni data were required.

● The system should be available via mobile access anytime and anywhere.

● The security issues have to be known as the application runs by a cloud service

provider.

Uses Cases

A use case is a description that includes a business function performed by the user and the

system (Larman, 2005).

The given requirements above can be visualised as a use case diagram. This can be seen in

Diagram 1 which illustrates the interaction between the alumni, the system and the

university administrator in the cloud.

Diagram 1: Use case diagram of the first prototype in the ARM system

Alumni

1..*

1 University Administrator

Cloud Services

University Alumni Social Networking Page

ARM System

Input information

Output information

Process Information

1..* 1..*

1 1

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35

Use Case UC1 : Input information

Brief Description

The main purpose of this action is to bridge the social networking sites and the university

ARM application. Therefore, the cloud service can be regarded as a system which includes

those two separate platforms where the users see them as one single application. The

alumni is able to write information on the university social networking page and can see

any response to it by the university or alumni. On the other hand, the university

administrators could retrieve and respond from the university application to the social

networking sites directly from the ARM application. The system should retrieve the

information from the social networking site and should be able to process the information at

the university alumni application. This will increase not only the communication efficiency

but also the maintenance level and access capability.

Use Case UC2 : Output information

Brief Description

The business function for this use case is the logical opposite of the former UC1, because it

describes not only the response action to the alumni but also the expression of new output

information from the university ARM application to the university alumni social

networking page.

5.1.2 Design

Connecting the CRM application with a social networking page is the most important

criteria in the design of this prototype. This is necessary in order to increase the

communication efficiency and attract lost alumni. Thus, a user interface that can retrieve

the information from a social networking site and a function that could send an

acknowledgement needed to be designed. Technically the application was expected to run

on the cloud, the server and database had to be delivered from a cloud service provider.

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36

An activity diagram (Larman, 2005) is illustrated in order to show the activity flow

between the social networking page and the ARM system. Diagram 2 exhibits the sequence

of their activities.

Social Networking Site ARM System

Diagram 2: An activity diagram showing the communication

between the university ARM system and a social networking site

The diagram illustrates the process when an alumni writes a message on the university

social networking page which is connected with the ARM system. The alumni logs in from

the social networking site, which makes the alumni able to search for and look up the

university alumni page, he/she can then interact with the page, and make input for

submission which directs the information to the ARM system. On the other hand, if the

administrator is logged into the ARM system, then he can respond to the information

submitted by the alumni. This information will then be displayed on the social networking

Alumni search for university alumni page

Output information

Alumni login to the

social networking site

Input information

University administrator

login to the system

Get information

Process information

Chapter 5 Prototype

37

site. In addition, the administrator may also update information on the social networking

page directly from the ARM system.

5.1.3 Development

An ARM application was implemented with the support of the Salesforce.com developer

platform (Salesforce.com, 2011b). Salesforce.com provides a free developer edition on the

Force.com platform which provides a platform as a service (PaaS) environment. This

platform allows the developers to create a CRM system in a cloud-based environment. This

enables the developer to deploy an application without having the underlying hardware and

software components in house. It also supports the development of the application with the

popular Java programming language so that other application could be developed from

scratch. In addition, the platform offers a pre-configured development environment where

applications can be implemented with a few simple mouse clicks. Thus, by using the

Force.com platform, the first prototype could easily be implemented without concerning

about the aspects of IT infrastructure. Moreover, during the implementation of the feature

to connect to the social networking page with the application, it is discovered that the

Force.com platform already has a provision for the rapid connection of apps to some certain

social networking sites. It is due to this fact that a huge amount of time and effort could be

saved so that the application could be directly applied for testing as well as evaluating. A

page on Facebook was created among many other social networking sites because it was

easier to test it with other participants. The following figures show how the ARM

application looks like and how it interacts with Facebook.

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38

Figure 5 shows the created Sheffield alumni page on Facebook. Alumni and university

administrators were able to post information on the wall.

Figure 5: Sheffield alumni test page

Figure 6 illustrates the integrated page of a social networking site in the ARM system. Page

feeds from Facebook could be received from this.

Figure 6: Social networking page in the ARM system

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39

Figure 7 shows how the admin responds to feeds received from Facebook.

Figure 7: A page for response income messages

―I am interested....dissertation‖ is the message that the application has received from

Facebook. ―A message to... ARM system‖ is the message that will appear on the Facebook

page when the administrator presses the Share button.

5.1.4 Evaluation

At this stage, it was necessary to get participants for the interview that was to be conducted.

Some alumni were chosen as possible candidates and were contacted via email. Six agreed

to participate in a face-to-face interview. Two of the six alumni are current masters students

and are therefore implicitly alumni of an undergraduate degree university. Four of them

recently graduated from a university and have recently started their careers in the private

sector. The last tester graduated from a university in the UK over ten years ago.

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40

Information about the Force.com platform, cloud computing and CRM strategies were

briefly explained to all the participants before demonstrating the application to give them a

better understanding about the project. The interview lasted for 60 - 90 minutes which was

longer than initially planned. All of them found the approach interesting and an enthusiastic

attitude was observed throughout the interview.

5.1.4.1 Findings

About 30 % of the alumni had lost contact with the university or were not well informed of

their previous alumni systems. It was therefore evident that the next crucial task, was to

have a better identification method of alumni rather than just connecting the platform with

the social networking page.

It was determined that with the current situation the university cannot retrieve the profile

information of the alumni until he shows his information in public. In addition, the

proposed system was not attractive enough to bind the alumni to system for long time. All

the participants agreed that the attempt of the proposed ARM system is useful and practical

but did not impress them enough to use the system immediately. This has brought about

concern because the proposed system did not attract alumni as planned since it did not offer

any direct benefits to them. Based on all the facts gathered, an efficient approach of getting

active alumni data and designing an attractive feature on the ARM system was required.

Moreover, a view from another aspect perspective was proposed in the second prototype;

those who use the alumni system directly as an end-user for example the university alumni

administrators. Since the proposed system would not profit the alumni directly, it was

considered relevant to interview those people who work with the system to get their

feedback. Finally, it was discovered that using the ARM system for finding friends was not

considered as attractive because the alumni already had most of their friends on their social

networking friend list but it was observed that there was an interest to find their professors

using the system.

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5.1.4.2 Discussion

The evaluation could be represented in the following order based on interpretations

retrieved from the interview script.

1. Current experience

None of the interviewees were active users of their current university alumni system. Four

of them said they receive an email or magazine from their Alma mater. Others pointed out

that they have not been able to maintain the contact to their university. Amongst the alumni

who claimed to receive information from their university, only half of them found these

useful but did not acknowledge it as an essential information source. Alumni 1 stated that ―I

sometimes receive magazines but have not carefully read them yet‖

2. Experience with the proposed application

All interviewees agreed that this approach seemed to be useful. Alumni 2 stated that ―I

think it is a very good idea using existing social networking websites‖. Alumni 1 stated he

would first look through a social networking site rather than going directly to the university

web page when searching for the alumni page. He explained that he thinks the information

on social networking sites are the most up-to-date information that the current organisation

provides. He also acknowledged that even though he has not searched for the university

social networking alumni page yet and he did not know if one even existed, he was sure to

search and find the university‘s page there when the need arise. Alumni 3 said ―I also

thought the university has a page or group on a social networking platform‖. From the

cloud computing perspective, although, the alumni are not directly involved with the

benefits it presents such as the low costs, scalability of hardware resources, they

complemented the method as a potentially profitable resource for the university. However,

when it came to the question of the attractiveness of the service or the frequent use of the

product as an information system, the majority showed a pessimistic attitude. Also, when

they were asked about the inclusion of a private social networking feature in the alumni

platform, it was obvious that the alumni preferred to interact with their friends on social

networking sites rather than on the alumni platform. They also argued that it is faster and

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42

more convenient to find friends on social networks than searching for them on an alumni

site.

3. Emerging requirements

There were a variety of different expectations for the ARM platform of the participants.

Those expectations could be summarised as follow;

● The platform would be considered attractive if the application can bind not only the

relationship with their old classmates but also with their lecturers. Alumni 3 said

that ―Having knowledge of what my former professor does would be very valuable

for me.‖

● If the system could provide the latest research or publication that the university is

currently involved in, this could be practically used. As many graduates still require

more knowledge after leaving the university, getting academic information will be

valuable. Alumni 4 stated ―I love academic works‖.

● The system could be used in a more professional way like LinkedIn, for processes

in organisations like recruitment. Alumni 5 stated that ―It could be used for head

hunting‖.

● If the application could provide useful information for alumni interested in visiting

the university as guest lecturers, Alumni 4 stated that ―I would be interested in

going back to university to teach....It would be great if the network could allow this‖.

● Even though most of them claimed that it could not be used as an alternative for a

private social networking site because of the dominance of the major site, one

participant said it still could be useful because some countries ban the regular social

networking sites. Therefore, it could be worth having it in their house. Alumni 6

stated that ―my classmates are from all across the world, some of them are not in

Facebook‖.

● A universal alumni platform was suggested, because it was annoying to have log

into two different alumni pages when the BSc and MSc degrees were obtained from

different universities. Alumni 1 stated that ―I studied in two different

universities...If I could use my former and latest university alumni platform together,

that would be useful‖.

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5.1.5 Conclusion

The first prototype was successfully implemented because the required tool already existed

at the Force.com platform. Hence, the next procedure was to interview the alumni. The

result was positive and all of them found the approach useful, although there were some

other challenges regarding the identification and attractiveness. As cloud computing is still

an emerging trend, many of the interviewees liked the idea of easy access, maintenance,

and cost reduction. Finally, considering the feedback and time, it seems to be realistic to

find a solution to retrieve up-to-date alumni data and to implement social networking to the

ARM system in the second prototype. Other proposed emerging requirements will remain

for future works.

5.2 Second Prototype

As expected from a design research methodology, new knowledge and propositions were

gathered from the first prototype design. The new knowledge from the findings and results

will be introduced in the second iteration which then becomes the second prototype. To

give a wider scope and to enhance the quality, a wider range of stakeholders were chosen in

the evaluation phase.

5.2.1 Requirements analysis

After analysing the findings and discussion from the first prototype, it was recognised that a

more efficient way for alumni identification and attraction was necessary. The suggestion

of the first prototype was analysed as follow.

● For an efficient method of identifying alumni active data, the Facebook API was

studied extensively, and it was discovered that user profile information could be

retrieved by implementing an opt-in feature that is provided by the API (Facebook,

2011).

● In consideration of the expectation of an attractive ARM system, an in-built social

networking feature to the ARM system was proposed to increase this attraction.

This feature will be able to follow another user, search for another user, receive and

send messages to other users. It was believed that the in-built feature could establish

a closer communication level between alumni and their professors.

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44

In representing the social networks, Facebook will be used henceforth for the rest of the

second prototype since the development was based on it. The following demonstrate the

requirements that had to be achieved in this prototype.

Functional requirements

● The system should be capable of getting user information of the alumni from

Facebook that will be directly synchronised with the ARM system. An opt-in

permissions dialog would have to be displayed before retrieving the data.

● The system should enable the searching of registered users.

● The user should be able to send and receive messages to and from other registered

users.

● A considerable level of security and privacy preferences have to be implemented in

order to allow or restrict information access for certain groups of people when users

are being followed.

Non-Functional requirements

● The legal statements have to be clarified since users‘ sensible and important data

will be received, after the opt-in phase.

● The social features in the system have to be easy to navigate.

● The opt-in function has to be easy to conform and clearly comprehensible by the

users.

● Information transfer between users should be in real time.

Use cases

The requirements mentioned above can be illustrated in a use case diagram as shown in

Diagram 3. This displays the interaction between the alumni and the system.

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45

Diagram 3: Use case diagram of the second prototype in the ARM system

Use Case UC1 : Opt-in for data retrieval

Brief Description

An alumni logs into Facebook to search for the university alumni page. He desires to join

the page, and then an opt-in dialog pops out to access his profile information. If the alumni

opts-in to share information, the system can store the given profile information.

Use Case UC2 : Follow other users

Brief Description

The alumni logs into the system to search for another alumni or professor. If the alumni

identifies a registered user, he or she should be able to follow the person by pressing the

‗Follow‘ button. After this action, the alumni should be able to see the posting information

1 Alumni

1

Cloud Service

University Alumni Social Networking Page

Opt-in for data retrieval

ARM System

Follow other user

Retrieve profile information

Search for users

Get messages

Send messages to other users

1 1

1

1..*

1..*

1..*

1..*

1

Chapter 5 Prototype

46

of the selected person. It was assumed that a denial function of the chosen person is not

necessarily required as it was supposed to be a prototype.

Use Case UC3 : Search for other users

Brief Description

An alumni searches for a friend or professor. He or she then types the name on the search

bar and presses the search button. If the system finds users who matches with the entered

name it should deliver all registered users from the database.

Use Case UC4 : Get messages

Brief Description

The alumni follows or is being followed by other users. He or she should be able to receive

messages if the one of these users shares information on his profile wall. However, the

alumni will be able to receive a direct message from another person even though he or she

is not in the friends list. This should be done independently without having them in their

network.

Use Case UC5 : Send messages

Brief Description

The alumni wants to send messages to another user and he/she types information on his/her

profile wall under the precondition that the alumni follows or is being followed by other

users. In this case all users who are in his/her friend list will be able to get messages.

5.2.2 Design

For the second prototype, two aspects were designed. The first aspect dealt with the

performance of an opt-in function which was regarded as a first priority considering the

requirements analysis. A window should display the opt-in information on Facebook when

an alumni desires to join the university alumni page. However, a customised design of this

dialog would have been considered as highly difficult as this window would be

implemented on the Facebook API where the user interface is already pre-designed. The

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47

other design aspect was the in-built social networking features in the ARM system. A user

interface for this action might be also difficult to adjust because it will be implemented on

the Force.com platform. Therefore, only the internal process was demonstrated in the

activity diagram. This would provide a better understanding of the activity flow that will be

performed in this prototype.

Diagram 4 illustrates the activity flow on how the system retrieves the profile information

of an alumni. The alumni logs into Facebook to search for the university alumni page. The

page link is clicked to reveal the page, and then an opt-in window appears to access the

information. If the application is granted permission, the page will then become visible.

Facebook ARM System

Diagram 4: Activity diagram showing the process opt-in function

Join alumni page

Store user data

Alumni login

to Facebook

Press the page

Ask permission to retrieve profile information

Search for

university alumni

page

Deny

Allow

No

matches

Find

Chapter 5 Prototype

48

Diagram 5 below illustrates the activity flow of the internal social networking features in

the ARM system. The alumni logs into the system with the intention to find former

professors or lost classmates and conducts a search in the system. The results of the search

are displayed and can thereby be added to their friends list if there are matches. The

mutually followed users are now able to see whatever information is shared by each other.

ARM System

Diagram 5: The activity flow of an in-built social networking feature in the ARM system

Search for user

Follow user

Get message Send message

Alumni login to system

Find

No

matches

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49

5.2.3 Development

A Facebook application, Sheffield Alumni Test App For Dissertation Purpose, was created

and an attempt to retrieve Facebook user information was conducted. The application could

not be fully implemented and there were many shortcomings in the application. Due to the

limited time, it was difficult to integrate the application with the university alumni page that

could retrieve profile information. However, the function of retrieving up-to-date user

profile information by the ARM system was achieved as was stated in the aim of the

dissertation.

Figure 8 below shows how it looks like when an application in Facebook access to the user

profile information.

Figure 8: An opt-in dialog for the ARM application in Facebook

For the other remaining part of the development, Salesforce.com‘s Chatter service was used

(Salesforce.com, 2011a). This service performs social networking features that enable to

search, follow, send and receive messages to other users. The Chatter service was provided

by default when the CRM application at the Force.com platform was created. Therefore, an

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50

immense amount of time was saved and the application was ready to be tested. The

following figures illustrate how professor and alumni could communicate in the ARM

system.

Figure 9: Search result of a professor in the ARM application

Figure 9 displays a situation when an alumni searches for a professor. The name of the

professor is typed in the search bar, and then the system would display the person if he

exists in the system. The alumni would then be able to follow this professor and see all

published information on his or her wall. Figure 10 shows a possible communication

scenario between the professor and alumni.

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51

Figure 10: Communication between alumni and professor in the ARM system

Alumni 2 has pressed the Follow button of Professor 2 in Figure 9. Now, the alumni can

see on his or her wall when Professor 2 updates information and can also respond to

comments. This is the social networking feature that was used by the support of the Chatter

service of Salesforce.com.

5.2.4 Evaluation

In the second prototype, five interviews were conducted. Like in the first iteration, an email

was sent to arrange a face-to-face meeting. The participants could be divided into three

groups; two of them were university administrators of the university Sheffield alumni office.

Two current lecturers of the University of Sheffield as well as an alumni who graduated

from two different universities and is now currently doing a post-doc also participated. The

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52

interview followed the same pattern which was used for the first prototype. However, the

questions for each group were derived from the context as their usages of the ARM system

were different. For example, each participant was asked about their current experience with

their university alumni system but the alumni office administrator was asked; ―what kind of

method do you use to contact your alumni ?‖. The lecturers were then asked; ―how do you

use an alumni system to contact your alumni ?‖.

5.2.4.1 Findings

The feedback for the second prototype was very positive even though it could not be fully

implemented. Especially, the university alumni office found the approach with retrieving

the profile information of social networking sites directly into their system very interesting.

They were the most critical interviewees, because they are the people who oversee the

system, therefore, the result could be described as successful. However, the realisation of a

cloud platform and in-built social networking features was not considered attractive. The

in-built social networking feature got more attention from the alumni and lecturers because

the new proposed system could bind their relationship more efficiently and confidentially.

It was discovered that lecturers really want to keep in touch with their former students as

they were curious to know what they were doing.

5.2.4.2 Discussion

The interview discussion can be divided in three different categories and their three main

themes which are described in the following.

Interview with lecturers

● Current experience: The lecturers said that they are not involved directly in the

university alumni system. Lecturer 1 stated that ―I use the service but not the

platform directly...If I want to send a questionnaire to the alumni, I will ask the

office to do that.‖

● Proposed ARM system: It was observed that there was a positive general review of

the system implementation attempt. Especially, the cloud computing utilisation

exercise demonstrated many potential benefits. Lecturer 1 stated: ―I think in the

near future the university will push many things into the cloud‖. However, legal

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53

problems and sensitive data still remained a big issue. The approach with the social

networking feature was also perceived as positive because they could easily reach

their old students.

● Emerging requirements: They showed a vast interest in communicating with their

former students and wanted to keep their relationship with them. Lecturer 2 stated:

―I am curious in what job area they are and would like to communicate with them in

a private platform‖. In addition, their expectations of the usage were more on the

improvement of the academic level. Lecturer 1 stated: ―It would be helpful if the

system allows to chose a certain sub group of alumni... to have an environment with

a virtual classroom...I can broadcast and people could discuss‖.

Interview with the university alumni administrators

● Current experience: The university alumni office has good experience and a high

satisfaction level with the current alumni system. The system comes with very

powerful tools and functionality to maintain their relationship with the alumni. They

have 14,000 registered alumni users who use their online alumni platform and

around 40 unique users use it every day. In addition, 170,000 people are registered

in their database, they have 135,000 addresses and 62,000 are email addresses

where information is sent every quarter to alumni.

● Proposed ARM system: The administrators were very interested in the application.

Particularly, the idea of pulling the profile information from social networking sites

as up-to-date contact details were very crucial from them. Administrator 1 stated

that ―the ability to taking update details from Facebook as another source of

information, that is potentially really useful‖. However, they were slightly skeptical

for the cloud computing approach as they deal with very sensitive data and as their

scale does not cover more than millions of users. In addition, a realisation of the in-

built social networking feature has been regarded as difficult. This is because

popular social networking sites are already dominating that introducing such

expensive software would not be worth it.

● Emerging requirements: Administrator 1 described the development of integrating

social networking site as a middle-ware could be interesting. That means creating a

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54

platform should be much easier whereby users are able to build their module or their

own web interface so that moving information backwards and forwards become

more common.

Interview with the alumni

● Current experience: The information he receives from the alumni office has been

regarded as positive but he is not familiar with the usage of the alumni platform.

● Proposed ARM system: He liked the idea of using an existing university social

networking site. He stated that ―I think it is good because normally people do not

tell the university when they change their information.‖ Furthermore, he showed

some interest in the in-built social networking feature as he could easily keep

communicating with his professors.

● Emerging requirements: As a graduate of two different universities, he desired a

unified system that could enable him get information from both universities in one

platform. In addition, he said he would be impressed if he could track his former

professor.

5.2.5. Conclusion

The second prototype could not be fully implemented but the function of retrieving

essential information of users‘ profiles and an in-built social networking in the ARM

system were available for testing. The result demonstrated a great potential of a very

efficient way to find and communicate with alumni as well as to maintain the relationship

to them by satisfying their desires. Much valuable feedback for future expectations that

showed a lot of potential in this ARM area was received from the participants.

Chapter 6 Data Collection

55

Chapter 6: Data Collection

An interview of participants was required to collect data for analysis of the current problem

domain which was conducted at the end of each prototype. The data collection from 11

interviewees included; 7 alumni, 2 lectures and 2 universities alumni administrators. All the

participants were UK residents and all alumni were graduates of universities in the UK. The

interview included flexible closed and open ended semi-structured questions. Bryman

(2008) stated that semi-structured interviews allow more flexibility because the initially

planned sequence of questioning can vary during schedule. This was aimed at collecting as

much information as possible from the proposed participants by observing these

participants. The interviews were conducted face-to-face after invitations were sent via

email. Most of the participants agreed to take the interview or they introduced someone else

who could help. For example, an email was sent to the head of the department of the alumni

office but he introduced their system administrator who was better acquainted with the

alumni system. Before the interview started an information sheet with a short instruction

was distributed and a consent form had to be signed and collected. The information sheet

and consent form used for the interview can be seen in the appendices 1 and 2. The

interview started with the introduction of the participants followed by a short demonstration

of the application and then a brief explanation of the project was made, which lasted about

15 minutes. The whole context was digitally recorded.

6.1 Data analysis of the interview

In order to analyse the information retrieved by those interviewees the recoded interview

was transcribed and coded. Coding is the method that helps to find the link between raw

data and the theoretical concepts (Seidel and Kelle, 1995). Therefore, similar codes were

combined together in order to find connections of those data and then they were interpreted.

This approach helps to identify, analyse and report patterns retrieved from the data which

then led to the findings and therefore were explained in terms of changes to the

requirements.

Chapter 6 Data Collection

56

6.2 Interview script

The interview script was designed to adequately capture data from a cross section of several

important groups of people that matter to the current situation of alumni relationship

management. It was made up of questions that broadly covers 3 domains; the present

situation of the alumni system, the impression and expectation of the proposed alumni

system, and the general emerging requirements of an ideal alumni system. The choice of

the invited participants was strongly based on the following 3 groups: alumni, lecturers, and

university administrators. The reason for the choice of participants in these groups was due

to the fact that these groups of individuals are the major stakeholders that are involved in

the operation of the system on a regular basis. The questions were created based on the

literature review and can be seen at the appendix 3 and a possible answer is given for each

question which referred to a specific part of the literature review.

Firstly, the questions from the domain of the present situation of the alumni system aims to

extract data related to the current experiences regarding the use of the alumni relationship

management system in the university. Data related to the time of adoption, reason for

adoption, issues and limitations of the system, level of satisfaction, methods and logistics of

the system, architecture of the system and others have been included in the interview script

because it represents a broad classification of data that is required for this study.

Secondly, the questions from the domain of the impression and expectation of the proposed

alumni system aims to extract data related to the level of contempt and satisfaction of the

proposed cloud ARM system as being a viable solution to the previous or old system. Data

related to the level of performance of the anticipated new features and the requirements of

the proposed system were collected also.

Thirdly, the questions from the domain of the general emerging requirements of an ideal

alumni system aims at collecting data related to the what will generally be required in the

future of an alumni relationship management system.

Chapter 7 Conclusion

57

Chapter 7: Conclusion

7.1 Summary of the project

This dissertation set out to investigate the problem of maintaining alumni by higher

institutions and propose a remedy for the problem by proposing the development of a cloud

ARM application. The cloud ARM application was suggested to adequately tackle the

research problem by leveraging on the remarkable features of CRM and the numerous

advantages of using cloud technology. It started out with an extensive study of existing

CRM strategies and highlighted the very significant ones that can be used in the application.

An extensive study of the cloud computing technology followed suit just before the process

of development began.

Design research which is a widely common research technique in information systems was

involved in the study because of the need for the development of the application. A number

of prototypes were required to be developed in order to draw understanding from the

developmental process. This study made use of just 2 prototypes due to time constraints.

The developmental requirements and specifications were drawn up, and then the analysis

for the design was carried out effectively. It was discovered that the application can be

integrated with social networking sites and direct communication could be established

between the ARM application and the social networking sites. Also, user information

retrieved by an opt-in dialog was a crucial solution for maintaining their relationship. All of

these proved to be attractive for alumni, with the inclusive ability that they could find and

communicate with their professors within the system.

In conclusion, the retrieval of current and accurate information was a key achievement of

the system alongside the alumni - professor relationship and it proved to be an attractive

platform for alumni relationship management from participant reviews.


58

7.2 Reviewing objectives

The following describes the whole summary of the research achievements by recalling the

objectives defined at the beginning.

1. To examine the theoretical aspects of CRM that includes the overall understanding,

benefits, challenges and its use in higher education

This was covered in the literature review where the definition, evolution, adoption,

strategies, benefits and challenges of CRM as well as the use in higher education

were exhaustively examined.

2. To examine the theoretical aspects of cloud computing technology that includes the

overall understanding, benefits, challenges and its usage in combination with a

CRM system as well as the use in higher education.

This was covered in the literature review where the definition, concept, benefits and

challenges of cloud computing were discussed for an overall understanding.

Furthermore, the study of cloud computing with CRM and that of cloud computing

in higher education has also provided knowledge in that field which fulfilled the

requirements of the objective.

3. To identify a suitable strategy that can find lost alumni.

A suitable strategy that combined the alumni system with social networking sites

in a cloud environment was developed and evaluated.

4. To implement and evaluate an ARM system that performs CRM function in the

cloud computing environment.

The ARM system was implemented on the Force.com platform with two prototypes.

5. To recommend a solution of how ARM can be efficiently applied to managing the

relationship with alumni in higher educational institutions.

An artifact was created that could recommend a solution which even received a

good reputation at the university alumni office.


59

7.3 Difficulties

First of all, there were numerous scholarly articles in terms of business related CRM

concepts, but literature on CRM in higher education and cloud computing was relatively

rare. Especially, studies about cloud CRM application related in higher education for

alumni cloud not be found.

Secondly, the second prototype which could have provided more valuable knowledge could

not be fully implemented because of the limited time.

Thirdly, all of the alumni except one were recent graduates of one or more universities.

They might show a low interest for the alumni system due to the integration with their new

environment.

Fourthly, the task of connecting the ARM system with a social networking site could only

be performed with Facebook because of the limited time; whilst LinkedIn which focuses

more on a certain group rather than the users as a whole could have been more suitable

because it could have brought other valuable information from another perspective.

Finally, a quantitative method with questionnaire was planned that could have contributed

to a much improved quality of the work but because the artifact had to be demonstrated for

understanding, a video demonstration of the application was created. However, considering

that the time for distribution and interpretation was too dense, the approach had to be

terminated. The video demonstration is attached in the hard cover version of this

dissertation.

7.4 Future work

This study area has shown a huge potential and would continuously play an important role

for universities. To contribute in a more efficient way overcoming the difficulties and

limitation of the remaining part of the project would be the first task that the project could

perform. Other future works could be considered from the emerging requirement retrieved

by those participant interviews above. To conclude, three high level suggestions could

summarise the future work of what an alumni management system should always consider

in its future implementation.


60

● It should ensure to make a closer relation between alumni and lecturers.

● The most critical part that it has to include is always the up-to-date data of the

alumni.

● Security issues have to be diminished as much as possible because of the sensitive

nature in this area.

Word counts: 16,473

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Appendices

XVIII

Appendix 1

Appendices

XIX

Appendix 2

Appendices

XX

Appendix 3

Interview (University Administrator)

Current experience

● Can you please brief me about the current alumni CRM platform?

Possible answer : Section 2.2.1

● When did you begin to adopt the alumni system?


● How did you begin to adopt the alumni system?


● Why did you adopt an alumni system?


● What are the benefits and challenges of this system?

Possible answer : Section 2.2.5 and 2.2.6

● For how long have you been using the ARM system?


● What kind of CRM strategies are being used?


● What methods do you use to contact your alumni?


● Do you use a client server model or cloud computing?

Possible answer : Section 3.3

● Are there many higher institutions who use a CRM solution?


Appendices

XXI

Proposed ARM system

● What do you think about the idea of the suggested ARM system?


● Would you like to adopt this product? Can you explain the reason?


● What do you think are the advantages and disadvantages?

Possible answer : Section 3.4 and Section 3.5

● What is your opinion about cloud computing?


● What do you think of the idea of using social networking features in the CRM

application?


● Do you think it can be more profitable when the sever is in the cloud?


Emerging Requirements

● What would you expect from an ARM system ?


Interview (University Lecturer)

Current experience

● Can you tell us what you know about the current alumni CRM platform?


● How do you use the alumni platform?


Appendices

XXII

● Since when did you begin to use the ARM system?


● What is your opinion about the benefits and challenges?

Possible answer : Section 2.2.5 and Section 2.2.6

● How do you use the ARM system to contact your alumni?


Proposed ARM system



● Would you like to use this product? Can you explain the reason?


● What do you think are the advantage and disadvantages?


● What do you know about cloud computing?


● What do you think about the cloud computing concept?


● What is your opinion of using social networking features in the CRM application?


● Do you think it can be more profitable when the sever is in the cloud?



● What would you expect from a ARM system ?


Appendices

XXIII

Interview (Alumni)

Current experience

● Can you explain your experience about the current alumni CRM platform?


● How do you use the alumni platform?


● Since when did you begin to use the ARM system?


● What is your opinion about the benefits and challenges?

Possible answer : Section 2.2.4 and Section 2.2.5

● How do you manage your relationship with friends?


Proposed ARM system



● Would you like to use this product? Can you explain the reason?


● What do you think are the advantage and disadvantages?


● What do you know about cloud computing?


● What do you think about the cloud computing concept?


● What is your opinion of using social networking features of in the CRM application?


Appendices

XXIV


● What would you expect from a ARM system ?
