IT Case Study Essay Research Paper The

IT Case Study Essay, Research Paper

The organisation on which this case study is based is named ¡¥MGON¡¦ which is an acronym for ¡¥Media And Games Online.¡¦ The company is based in Stockholm, Sweden, although as it is an Internet based company it could be considered as a world-wide organisation. The company currently has a workforce of just over 200 employees, around 20 of which work full time. The majority of the company however, consists of people working from their homes through the use of the Internet.

The actual purpose of the company is to serve an online community with a collection of topic-specific websites, as the name of the company suggests the range of sites are limited to that of Media and Games. Currently the network consists of around 30 sites, although the number is increasing as the company continues to develop into one of the largest online portals on the Internet. As the Internet is the quickest expanding form of media at the current time, the company must cater for its audience in an appropriate way and match the demands of the increasing market. Despite the current dip in the market, the company is continuing to do well and recently announced an impressive annual income.

The information that the company needs to be collected is vital to it¡¦s success. Without surveys and polls, very little information would be known. The most important aspect to be considered is that of the ¡¥Target Audience¡¦ that the company must cater for, as without a specific target audience the company could not market a specific area efficiently as the range would be far too great. Initially when the company was first established, a survey was performed via the company¡¦s own site (http://www.mgon.com). This enabled them to acknowledge what user group their products would have to be geared towards, the results were very conclusive and greatly aided with research. Other information could be gathered from other sources and existing surveys that had previously been published and made easily available.

After all this information had been gathered, it was possible to design the company around the specific target audience, which was determined by the online survey. The results showed that 82% of the audience are male, 46% under 18, 27% were18-24 years of age and 18% were 25-34 years. Many other pieces of information were found that made the target audience very specific.

As well as this initial survey however, there is also a ¡¥Poll¡¦ on the site which asks visitors specific questions that will aid the company with research, once the visitor has submitted his opinion on the subject, the results are shown and are available to all who participate as well as the company. This way, the ever-changing market can be constantly re-evaluated and new figures found. This is a common way in which Internet based companies discover information that is required. Without the information, the company would not know which topics to base new sites on the network upon and would therefore create some sites that proved unpopular, therefore revenue would be lost as the advertising banners would not be displayed as often.

Once the information has been submitted, it is sent to the servers in real-time and is made available to the company, the information is then stored on a local hard disk. The results may then become available on the Internet for the general public. As the data is submitted through the company¡¦s website, all the information is in .html format and is therefore easily readable and appropriately displayed in a clearly visible front-end.

Communication between the company generally takes place over the Internet in IRC channels specific to the company, that way an unlimited number of people can

Participate in discussion and the topics can be easily moderated and file transfers can be performed. Email would be the second most common method of interaction, as many hundreds of people may need to be aware of a situation, this can be done quickly and efficiently in little time. Other methods of communication include telephone, the Internet in specific forms such as forums and file transfers over the Internet and LAN.

The company as a whole, seems very efficient due to the use of IT, without it infact, the company could not exist. The company makes very good use of technology available and this is apparent when the many methods of communication are considered. However, many elements could be improved upon such as user interfaces and the time in which it takes to get a message across to a large group of people, due to the fact that the technology is fairly new, there are occasional faults and glitches within the system. For example, if the file server goes down, the whole network would become useless as none of the sites would be visible and valuable time and work lost, as has happened in the past. Security should also be of the highest level to combat against potential hackers and those who wish to damage the company through methods such as a potentially dangerous virus.

The software that the organisation uses includes the programmes of other companies and in-house developments that are required for specific tasks. For example, the websites that were developed by the company were all made internally, albeit using external tools such as Macromedi