Postgraduate Course: Digital Strategy (BUST11229)
Course Outline
| School | Business School |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| SCQF Credits | 10 |
ECTS Credits | 5 |
| Summary | The purpose of this elective course is to explore the key issues involved in developing, implementing and managing digital strategies for sustained growth and competitiveness. The main focus is on digital strategy, implementation and performance measurement. |
| Course description |
The overall aim of the course is to ensure that students are equipped with the conceptual knowledge and practical skills required to develop digital strategies and to become digital-savvy managers and leaders. The course will equip students with the knowledge and skills required for operating successfully in an era of turbulent digital change.
The course will be structured around key topics critical to successful digital transformation:
¿ Understanding the digital and social media revolutions
¿ The use of digital and social media technologies externally for customer and partner engagement
¿ The internal use of digital and social technologies within the business to improve efficiency and knowledge transfer
¿ The use of digital data and analytics to underpin the development of effective marketing strategies
¿ Digital and social media strategy development, implementation and performance measurement
Course content will cover the why, what, how and who of digital transformation strategy, implementation and performance measurement. The course builds an international dimension through consideration of business cases from a variety of continents and different economy contexts. The course also builds a responsible leadership dimension by considering the ethics of digital business and consumer/data protection, privacy, regulation and codes of conduct.
Student Learning Experience
The five main teaching and learning methods used in the class will be: lectures and related support material via LEARN; open discussion and debate in class; group work in developing solutions to case problems (and presentations); computer workshops with hands-on access to web analytics software; and proactive participation in an online learning community set up to support the class. In terms of innovation, the course will include guest speakers from industry (agency and client-side) to present on current best practice. The course will also link to the School Partnership with Dixons Carphone and Adobe and integrate software and case contributions on web analytics practice. Assessment will focus on the development of a digital strategy for a specific business, enabling students to work in a consulting capacity and applying frameworks and models in practice.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Understand and critically discuss the opportunities and threats presented by the digital and social media revolutions
- Critically evaluate the key issues involved in developing effective digital business transformation strategies and key success factors in digital business transformation
- Discuss critically the frameworks and tools available for measuring digital/social media performance and business impact, including web analytics
- Apply relevant frameworks and tools to real-world digital business challenges: identifying their key features and implications, setting appropriate digital marketing objectives and evaluating alternative digital strategies.
- Undertake a digital and social media landscape analysis and develop a digital and social media strategy and action-plan for an organisation incorporating appropriate metrics and analytics.
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Reading List
There is no required text book. The following books will be useful for background reading:
Scott, D. M. (2007, 2013) The New Rules of Marketing & PR: How to Use Social Media, Online Video, Mobile Applications, Blogs, News Releases, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly, John Wiley and Sons.
Scott, D. M. (2014) The New Rules of Sales and Service: How to Use Agile Selling, Real-Time Customer
Engagement, Big Data, Content, and Storytelling to Grow Your Business, John Wiley and Sons.
Solis, B. (2012) The End of Business As Usual: Rewire the Way You Work to Succeed in the Consumer
Revolution, John Wiley and Sons.
Solis, B. (2013) What's the Future of Business: Changing the Way Businesses Create Experiences, John
Wiley and Sons.
Tapscott, D. and Williams, A. (2006) Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything Atlantic
Books.
Tapscott, D. and Williams, A. (2009) Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World, McGraw-Hill.
Tapscott, D. and Williams, A. (2010) MacroWikinomics: New Solutions for a Connected Planet Penguin.
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Cognitive and Subject Specific Skills
¿ Critically evaluate key digital strategy concepts, theory and practice.
¿ Communicate clearly to others an analysis of digital strategy situations or evaluation of theory.
¿ Apply frameworks to real-world marketing problems.
¿ Reflect on the relevance of digital and social media to managers, business leaders and as a consumer
Transferable Skills
¿ Develop confidence and skills in business engagement.
¿ Demonstrate skills of critical analysis and evaluation of alternative courses of action.
¿ Identify, locate and evaluate source material (academic and practitioner) to support arguments
¿ Develop communication skills through participation in online communities.
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| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Malcolm Kirkup
Tel:
Email: |
Course secretary | Ms Inga Ackermann
Tel: (0131 6)51 5294
Email: |
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