Analysis of the Fit of Learning and Management Systems in Higher Education Institutions: A Case Study from Saudi Arabia

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are heavily investing in learning and management systems to support and enhance the quality of services provided to key stakeholders; namely, the students. However, the degree of fit of such systems with the needs of students varies significantly from one higher education institution to another. Therefore, continuous assessment of this kind of fit has to be undertaken by HEIs to ensure that these systems are continuously adding business value and maintaining appropriate level of return on investments. The problematic issue is that there is a scarcity of business and Infromation Technology (IT) alignment evaluation research or tool that is dedicated to this purpose in this sector. This motivates this ongoing research to be undertaken devising a theoretical framework as an artefact that incorporates set of business analytics tools to facilitate the evaluation of the business value from IT. The Design Science Research is adopted as the research methodology in this research to guide the development process of this artefact. This paper, however, focuses mainly on providing background information about the issue of business and IT alignment in general and in the higher education sector in particular. It then describes the alignment influencing factors that impact on the alignment between business and IT. Through a real life case study from a higher education institution in Saudi Arabia, the paper aims to present the IT alignment issue in this sector, and also discuss some of its influencing factors to illustrate how they influence the degree of fit between business and IT.