Information technology- Strategic plan
Introduction
Today’s highly competitive market requires that organizations focus on new methods and strategies for competitive advantage. In this era of technology, the survival of the companies is dependent on the effective and efficient implementation of different technological tools and techniques. This paper aims to suggest information technology strategic plan for Snapchat.
Snapchat is a company based on internet and serves the online communication services to the users around the world. The company was come to establish when Bobby Murphy, Evan Spiegel, and Reggie Brown Poster have designed an application for video messaging being the students of Stanford University. The users of snapchat can share pictures and videos and according to the statistics of 2015, 200 million snaps and videos were sent using snapchat. The company exists in the social media networking industry where, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram LinkedIn, Pinterest and many other social media platforms are the rivals of Snapchat. The company was established in 2013 as the revenue earning company. The current revenue of the company is $5 million; however, it needs to improve by leading to $20 million with the help of information technology improvements.
Vision
The company has been developed with the long term vision or it can be called as long term plan that include six important aspects as follows:
No targeted ads
Editorial network building
Focus on mobile
Draining the data
Digital music
Mission
The mission of the company is to offer the explosive impossible technology in the crowd of the technology applications. The company is developed with the aim to offer unique and different application to the users to share their videos and snaps.
Current Situation of the Company regarded to its technology and security aspects
Being a social media company, Snapchat has been required to develop the system of the organization to deal with the information of millions of users across the world. Being a global company deals with videos and pictures, it has to manage large amount of information. For this purpose, the company has developed the system using cloud computing rather than developing its own organization. For any business, the technology management is very important in the modern era for understanding the demands in the market and increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty. The technology management helps in achieving the competitive advantage. In this purpose, Snapchat developed its technology management based on the cloud computing.
Cloud computing is an advanced information technology that is used to control the operations and activities of the business. The business of snapchat is completely relying on the cloud computing to operate its application, developing cloud infrastructure (Lazauskas, 2014). The reason for using cloud computing is to reduce the cost of doing business as it save the cost of hardware, employment, space for placing hardware, utilities and energy cost etc (Zhu, 2010).
Using cloud computing technology, the companies store their data in cloud, where they can easily store large amount of information and data. Snapchat Company has been working with Google, contracted for its cloud services to put the data of millions of users and their snaps and videos.
Though, cloud computing is considered as very beneficial as it is more available to the companies all the time as compare to the shifting job of the employees. However, on the same side, it has number of challenges and issues in using cloud computing. First of all, it causes security issues as the data can be hacked from the cloud. The problem was even faced by Snapchat, when the hackers hacked 100,000 snaps of the users of Snapchat. It means that the security issues are the major concerns that reduced the satisfaction of the customers and their loyalty, while, customer satisfaction is the fundamental concern for any business organization. The hacking issues of the company have resulted in the lack of trust among the users. The security issues are not limited to the users, but they are also impacting on the marketers and advertisers for relying on Snapchat for their marketing.
There are multiple challenges faced by snapchat in terms of security and control. Other than the security and hacking, the company also faces the lack of control over business activities and the management. In the modern world of information technology, it is very important for the companies to control the risks of technology. In line with these business challenges and problems, snapchat is facing multiple issues in its performance. Therefore, the company is required to redevelop its information technology system and management to improve its business performance, mainly to increase customer satisfaction and develop loyalty among them.
Information Technology Personnel and Roles
Discussing the problems of cloud computing, the company is required to develop its own IT infrastructure to reduce the issues of security and control. For this purpose, the company is required a staff of five personnel for developing information technology department. As the company is required to develop its own IT department with proper IT management, therefore, it required the IT personnel as follows:
Computer Programmer
Role and responsibilities
The major role of computer programmer is to develop the system for computers and to solve the problems using appropriate techniques.
The appropriate use of the language for the programs such as PHP, Java, C++ etc.
Network designer and analyst
Role and Responsibility
The analysis of the technologies in the network
Analysis of the current performance of the networking services
Implementation and preparation for the high quality in the networking services
Upgrading of the designs of the network
Database administrator
Role and Responsibility
The major role of the database administrator is to the respond to the users on daily basis for their complains, issues and feedback
The management of data of the users to give them access
Network administrator
Role and Responsibility
Planning and implementation of the software and hardware for the upgrading of the system
Coordinator
Role and Responsibility
The major role of coordinator is to supervise all the IT work
Communication with the rest of the IT staff
SWOT Analysis
SWOT analysis is very important to understand the health and current position of the company in the market that determines the strengths and weakness of the company along with the opportunities and threats from the external pressures. The SWOT analysis of Snapchat is as follows:
Strengths
The strengths of snapchat are as follows:
The major strength of the company is the unique application for video messaging. It is clear from the mission statement of the company that is to offer the unique and different application to the users. The application offers limited time to post and revisit the picture maximum of 24 hours.
Strength of the company is the high engagement of the users in the application. The nature of the application with the expiry date of the content is resulted in the high engagement of the users all around the world.
The fastest growth of the users is also included in the strengths of Snapchat. The snapchat targets the users of all age and the extended customer range has been resulted in the constant growth in the users of the application. The picture below shows the growth in the users of snapchat over the period of time:
(Statista, 2015)
It is successfully recognized around the world (Craven, 2016). The application is now considered as the fastest emerging and growing in the world (ICEF, 2015).
Weaknesses
Despite of the strengths, there are many weaknesses as well which are as follows:
The current security issues and challenges are the major weakness of Snapchat that might limit its use. The issues have already discussed above that the information of users at snapchat has hacked.
The control of vendors on the IT management of snapchat is it’s another weakness. The overall information technology system is based on cloud computing that is served by Google that means vendors are the real management of its IT operations rather the company itself.
The lack of trust among the users in terms of security is one of the major weaknesses for snapchat. The security issues are the major cause of the lack of trust that is resulted in avoidance of using application among the users.
Another major and most arguable weakness of Snapchat is no consistent source of revenue. The business model of the company is undefined, improper and confusing (Edwards, 2013).
It has no proper, reliable and long term advertising partners that are also resulted in the limited and inconsistent revenue of the company.
Opportunities
Snapchat has the following opportunities to grow with the use of Information technology:
The first and the major opportunity for snapchat is the range of multiple advertising partners to enhance the revenue in the market. The company can potentially attract many advertisers and marketers with the improvements in the application and its security aspects.
The awareness and desire of security among the users of social media is growing constantly that is the opportunity for Snapchat to enhance its information technology system and increase the users around the world.
Threats
Despite of the opportunities, it has following threats that can further results in more weaknesses:
The hacking and security issues are the growing concern in the information technology field these days and the hackers can damage the reputation of Snapchat among the users.
The launch of new social media and communication applications is another threat to the company that might impacts on its revenue, users and growth.
The security concerns and measurements of other social media companies such as Facebook and twitter is also a risk for snapchat as the users will become more loyal to these social media applications and platforms. The loyalty to other brands decreases the loyalty of the users to the company.
Goals of Information Technology Strategic Plan
Developing any plan, it is very important to define the accurate goals. The strategic plan of information technology for Snapchat is based on the following major goals:
Goal 1:
Goal 2:
Goal 3:
Goal 4:
Goal 5:
Goal 6:
Positive Impacts of implementing Strategic Plan
Although, snapchat is becoming popular and its users are growing successfully, still it needs to improve the information technology management to become the customer oriented company and enhancing its earnings and revenue. Customer service is the fundamental and the most important aspect of any business and organization of any type and size, therefore, the customer service quality must be very high to develop customer satisfaction and customer loyalty to the company. In the competitive world, those companies are successfully achieving the competitive advantage that are responding very frequently to the customer complains, feedbacks and questions. The role of information technology is very obvious and clear in forecasting and meeting the needs of the customers in the modern era (Steinkischner, 2012). Therefore, the strategic plan of information technology will have multiple positive impacts on the business of Snapchat.
First of all, the application of Snapchat will become more secure and trustworthy, once the internal management will be responsible for information management of the users. The monitoring and controlling of the IT system internally will increase the control of the company’s operations in the hands of the company management rather than the vendors using cloud computing. Once the company will respond more quickly and frequently to complains, issues and problems of the users of the application, more frequently it will be able to achieve the advantage of customer satisfaction and loyalty. The solution to the security and other issues will improve the customer service and enhance the company performance that develops loyalty in the customers to repeatedly use the application of Snapchat.
Rather than simply technology driven company, snapchat will become the customer driven company by new strategic IT plan. Once, the plan will be implemented then the pace of responding to the customers and interactions and communications with them will increase and the customer will get more quality services. The users’ satisfaction will attract the marketers and advertisers to use Snapchat platform for their marketing and the revenue of the company will increase automatically with the earnings from the marketers and advertisers.
References
Craven, S. (2016). Snapchat SWOT Analysis. Retrieved March 7, 2016, from http://theodysseyonline.com/ohio-northern/snapchat-swot-analysis/288681
Edwards, J. (2013). This Epic Dissection Of Snapchat's Business Model Says 'Snapchat Is Intrinsically Worthless'. Retrieved March 7, 2016, from http://www.businessinsider.com/snapchat-business-model-is-intrinsically-worthless-2013-11
ICEF Monitor. (2015). Getting started on Snapchat, one of the world’s fastest-growing social media apps. Retrieved March 7, 2016, from http://monitor.icef.com/2015/03/getting-started-on-snapchat-one-of-the-worlds-fastest-growing-social-media-apps/
Lazauskas, J. (2014). How The Cloud Makes Businesses Like Snapchat Possible. Forbes, Retrieved March 7, 2016, from http://www.forbes.com/sites/centurylink/2014/02/05/how-the-cloud-makes-businesses-like-snapchat-possible/
Statista. (2015). Number of photo messages sent by Snapchat users every day from December 2012 to July 2014 (in millions). Retrieved March 7, 2016, from http://www.statista.com/statistics/257128/number-of-photo-messages-sent-by-snapchat-users-every-day/
Steinkirchner, S. (2012). 5 Ways To Improve Your Customer Service. Retrieved March 7, 2016, from http://www.forbes.com/sites/sundaysteinkirchner/2012/08/22/5-ways-to-improve-your-customer-service/#292ec122154f
Zhu, J. (2010). Cloud Computing Technologies and Applications. Chapter 2.
