engleski

Developing Business-IT Alignment Skills through Data Management: Higher Education Example

Business-IT alignment (BITA) skills are one of the top concerns in companies since a misunderstanding is a common issue between the business units and the informatics department. BITA is becoming even more important with the challenges that the digital transformation is posing. Accordingly, top-level managers coming from the business domain are expected to have profound knowledge about information technology (IT) and related topics. The goal of this paper is to present an educational approach for developing BITA skills in the graduate-level course of Data Management in Business Administration university program. A project assignment is designed with the purpose of strengthening the BITA skills of business students. Additional objectives of the project are related to the learning outcomes of the course. Those include acquiring knowledge about databases and database modeling in order to empower students for gaining insights from data and recognizing the opportunities for business improvement in the digital economy. In order to meet the research goal of the article, the steps in the project assignment are shown. Students are required to simulate a business environment. Firstly, the business environment of a company which is encountered with digital disruption in their industry is designed. After that, actions for business improvement are defined. Then, modeling of a relational database that can support subsequent business requests is carried out. In the end, programming skills in SQL are applied to gain quality information needed for business actions. The presented project assignment incorporates a combination of business, IT, and digital skills which foster business development. Since employees and managers with strong BITA capabilities help companies to mitigate risks of losing time and money, and overseeing business opportunities for growth, the presented educational approach can be of great value to educators in higher education and business.

Business-IT Alignment ; Data Analysis Skills ; Digital Skills ; Education ; Relational Database Modeling

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