Adapting Digital Mobile-Electronics At Telstra: Ethical Essay.

Telstra Digital background

Discuss About The Computer Science And Electronics Engineering.

Telstra Crowdsupport. (2018), says that Telstra Corporation Ltd. is one of the largest telecommunication companies in Australia They deal in building and operating telecommunication networks and marketing mobile, voice services and internet services. The Telstra Corporation had been depending on their modular physical presence and a mere web presence on the internet to deal with their customers and extend their business contexts. However, they realized the need for adapting to the mobile application framework to further extend their services to the people. This report aims at clinically highlighting the case study relating to the adaptation of digital mobile-electronic means for accommodating, enhancing business processes of the Telstra organization. The Doing Ethics technique shall be used in order to evaluate the ethical concerns that may revolve around the digitalization of Telstra (Harcourt and Sargeant 2012). Furthermore, the ACS code of ethics framework shall be utilized to throw more light on the respective matters. Furthermore, in the sections that follow, the ethical consequences of adapting to the mobile platform shall be discussed with keen attention towards the IT governance and risk assessment methodologies. Finally recommendations are to be made by highlighting the pros and cons of this new venture.

In 2010, they adapted to the mobile and tabular platforms to bring their services into the palms of the millions of customers from all over. The company has connected to more than 16 Million mobile and tablet users with the rest of the world. Telstra recognized that both employees and customers engaged with them over the website every day, asking to have their problems resolved or queries answered. They also used the web system in order to share their views and experiences with Telstra's services and products. Gradually, their customers were expecting and deserving the same level of authenticity from interactions in digital environments as they traditionally were offered in the offline world. They recognized the need to create a Digital CX experience. They wanted this business modification to be brought into effect as soon as possible. The goals of this campaign included the digitization of their customer care services. The 24*7 support system on the mobile application seemed like a step forward for the company in their aim to achieve a respectable position before their customers. Their CrowdSupport community was powered by Lithium, which enable the customers to review and comment about the products and services provided by Telstra but not necessarily with the executives from Telstra (Cater-Steel et al. 2017).

Features of the Telstra 24*7 application

However, owing to the many changes that the business process at Telstra had to go through, several ethical queries may turn up at their door step. Below the Doing Ethics Technique shall be utilized to analyze the possible ethical considerations of the mobile application and the crowd-support system of Telstra.

Before elaborating on the ethical situation of adapting to the application service system, the features that the mobile application provides to its users and customers must be properly Users are allowed to create their Telstra account on the application and then gain access to number of important features. On logging into their respective account, the users allowed to check their estimated data usage of their eligible services. They can also view and pay bills online through the application and would also allow them to download a softcopy of their bills. Furthermore, the application allows their customers to view and buy from their listings of calling packs, data packs and many more. However, one of the main attractions of the application includes the 24*7 customer service support (ENVIRONEXUS and AUCKLAND 2016).

This technique helps to identify the engrossed ethical risks within a project and accordingly allows to sort ways out of it (Coghlan and Brannick 2014).

As mentioned before, the Telstra Corporation modified their business process from having only offline branches of stores around the nation. Their business model was then switched to have an e-commerce framework as well. After integrating the mobile application into their business model a lot of considerations had to be made in order to make the new business model feasible. This implementations include the integration of the existing business model with room for IT implications that could fit in the use of mobile applications and other electronic mediums to promote, reach out to and support their customers and employees from all around the globe. However, the assignment of information technology in a business process brings along several ethical questions that must be answered to get a clear picture of the whole scenario. Customers have been doubting the authenticity of the services that they are being provided online, they have been doubting the security features as well (Chen and Zhao 2012).

It is presumed that lots of data and security breach threats may be encountered in the process (Daya 2013). It is certainly presumable that almost any Information technology system faces these problems. Questions can be raised against the integrity of the company in their policies of the storing and handling of data. There are several scopes in the field of information technology where amateurs can doubt the trust that they levy onto their reliant companies. To realize the facts in details, it is necessary to dive deep into the core of the ethical issues that are closely related to the management of data and information using technological means, mainly (Chambers 2017). People may also be doubting the authenticity of the data that they are getting from the online sources through the application. Should they buy an offer online or should they wait for a meet-up chance, creates a strong dilemma within the business forum. The online payment method is another field that needs to be stressed upon to clear out customer doubts.

Doing Ethics Technique

As stated earlier, several issues can be identified and highlighted when a company makes the wish to switch onto a completely online solution thorough the likes of a mobile/tabular application. There are several technical, social and ethical issues that can be addressed under this section. The technical issues that can be highlighted include programming flaws in the development of the application. The designing flaws can also be considered to be an issue if the architecture of the application is not well planned before implementation (Ensmenger 2012). A newly developed application may crash on several instances, which is considered as a huge flaw in the technical aspects of a developed application. The compatibility of the mobile application is also a huge concern. With the advent of technology, comes more complexity into every field of implementation. This can be a challenge for amateur users. They need to have proper guidance of using internet accessed applications otherwise silly errors may come up that can cause them to uninstall the application and gradually lose faith over the service. Social issues may include advertising flaws within the system. The adverts that are featured in the application may be socially unacceptable in certain sections of the society. However, speaking of the ethical issues a huge list can be presented. People may question the authenticity of the company’s data keeping system. The company needs to be prepared to handle such situations. They need to figure out ways to make their customers to bestow their trust and yet then not give away too much of the company’s information. The situations where the users make the payment but due to technical flaws, the company does not receive any such confirmation, an ethical issue arises. The customer service needs to deal with this situation. Details on these issues will be discussed in a later section.

From the above listing of the possible ethical and non-ethical issues, it can be concluded that there will be varied severity of effects on the various stakeholders of the project. To carry on with this analysis, the stakeholders for the project must be recognized. The company CEO and Board of Directors form the most important part of the group of the internal stakeholders. The Management team, the Engineers team and the customer service team forms a crucial organ of the secondary internal stakeholders alongside the representatives from the Application Development Company. Telstra Crowdsupport. (2018) explains that the sales team for Telstra and the 3^rd party cloud service providers and the online payment gateway company can be termed as the secondary part of the external stakeholder group while considering the customers as the primary external stakeholders. It is generally predictable that every flaw in the system, be it technical or ethical is somehow or the other going to affect almost every entity of the stakeholder map especially them from the internal stack. However, the severity of the effects may vary depending on the indulgence of the individual. Telstra’s business process would be hindered if there are technical issues with the system. This will affect all the internal stakeholders and the customers. The internal stakeholders will have to work their hearts out in order to fix the issue as soon as possible and bring the system live, while it is their daily business proceedings at steak. On the other hand, the customers will not be able to gain quick access to their Telstra account if the server is down for crashes or fixes. The Primary Internal Stakeholders and also the secondary external stakeholders through the likes of the cloud service providers shall have to face questions if they cannot get their customers to trust them with their data policies.

What is going on?

First and foremost what needs to be considered is that has Telstra done it just because they wanted to match up in the race with their competitors. This is one of the gravest ethical consideration that must be analyzed primarily. Detailed studies about Telstra reveal that they were extremely eager to enroll themselves as one of the top companies in Deloitte’s “Short fuse, big bang” quadrant of the Digital distribution map. In such cases it is presumable that there was obviously a sense a haste among the management and the development team in order to release the application as soon as possible (Chen and Zhao 2012). This results in programming flaws that can risk the data of millions of users from all around the world. If a software product is launched without ample testing of the security features, it is made open to tons of cyber threats like hacking, jamming, spamming and many more (Lord 2013). This will degrade the quality of the product and may also lead in compromising important customer information. It would be interesting to figure out how the company wishes to handle ethical dilemmas regarding the display of offers in their application. It is presumed that the company will provide special offers for the application users. However, it is a well-known fact that all the customers of Telstra will not have access to high-end mobile phones or internet connections. This will void them off the chances to grab the valid offers that others are availing. This is a certain ethical issue where the company must decide if they wish to disappoint their existing customers in order to race for the digital market.

The leakage of confidential customer records are often seen to be leaked out or sold to other third party data science companies in exchange of money. This has over the past decade increased tremendously and has forced the general public to fade their trust over the Information Technology systems while in the quest of their data protection (Ren, Wang and Wang 2012).

Under the CrowdSupport wing of the application, an ethical issue that might affect the customer commotion level is poor online customer service. Being run on a server, it is suggestible that whenever the client wishes to gain the online support, there might be some network or technical flaw that might prevent the messages from being sent or may cause delay the admin’s reply. This would affect the customer satisfaction level of the service and would inherently degrade the ratings of the support-chat admin. In the meantime, their performance will be judged by the company on the basis of such ratings, in which they have no indulgence at all. This certainly raises a massive question of miscommunicated ethics.

What are the facts?

Telstra would require to look into the matter with more emphasis. They would require to analyze all the above mentioned ethical issues and try solving them with possible recommendations. The company must try to take such matters seriously in order to even out their business process over both the physical presence of the business and the online presence through the application. The organization must also take proper actions to ensure that the data and information of their clients are kept secured and their customer service is always available with prompt and helpful service (Ess 2013).

To figure out the ethical issues and sort them out accordingly, it is necessary for the company to may be try to frame a board of members who will look after such matters. Another option that can help in the defense of decreasing ratings of the customer support or sales team would be to provide the customers with different options to rate, where they can opt separate rating for the operations, sales, and support and so on, separately.

To frame a board of members whose job will be to analyze all-round ethical considerations and dealing with them individually, will be a better option. This team might consist of a group of higher level managers from the company alongside the HR manager and associative. They will be the best people who can take prompt decisions on what should be done and whether the customer activities are enough justified. They can review the customer feedbacks and reveal sales or support team employees off the pressure of wrongly made accusations or poor ratings. This will not only save the employee off a probable miscommunication but will also relief the company off a downpour.

The general public’s interest should always be kept at the highest concern for any business organization. It is necessary for the application to avert such situations where the company’s objective overshadows the application’s aim to help the customers with the ease of telecommunication access. The problems due to unethical adverts or the difficulty of the customers to reach the customer service may be camped under this section.

It must be realized that the purpose of the application is to enhance the quality of the way Telstra deals with their customers. Therefore, all points that may overshadow the business a bit but may help the customers to gain a bit more satisfaction should be given more preference. This is where the valid reviews from the peers are acknowledged.

What are the issues?

It is important that Telstra, through its application does not hide any information from their customers. With the option to notify or email their customers, they should always try to keep them updated about the upcoming bills, issues and many more. In addition, the customer’s service must also be truthful in their words while in conversation with the customer. No data should ever be leaked from the company server to the outside world. Data security has always been the biggest concern of the IT world.

Apart from fulfilling every possible and recommended needs for and of the customers, the application must also make sure that the requirements and concerns of all other stakeholders within the project are safeguarded. It is necessary to maintain a healthy business chain.

The employee access part of the application should thrive to maintain the privacy level of the employees alongside helping them with the right tools and options to help the customers who they are meant to serve.

It is therefore necessary for the Telstra mobile application to pertain to all the above code of ethics before the application is released into the system. It is important for the application to enlighten the name and fame of Telstra instead of letting it down on grounds of ethical issues.

Wu, Straub and Liang (2015), explains IT governance provides the organizations with the infrastructure for aligning IT strategies with the business strategies. By following a formal framework, organizations can produce measurable results toward achieving their strategies and goals.

There are several decision making tools that are great for solving all kinds of problems (Kristianto et al. 2012). However, some special techniques, frameworks or tools can be considered a great zeal while figuring out ethical solutions to certain real life problems regarding to business. The Telstra organization should consider get assistance from few such framework queries to analyze the gravity of the ethical issues that have been mentioned in the section above. Certain basic principles that might help in the process includes:

• To get into the shoes of others: It is necessary for the supervisors to realize every problems within the business process from the perspective of the sufferers. This includes the customers, employees and the employers as well.
• Information Gathering: In order to analyze an ethical system, it is necessary to collect all the information from the respective stakeholders.

The Potter Box technique can be used to help in the process of decision making while answering questions to resolve ethical dilemmas. The questions under this technique include:

1. Spot the action or policy that has caused the ethical issue.
2. Analyze the situation by answering the reasons, causes and details of the ethical dilemma.
3. Determine the values that are in question.
4. Highlight the principles that may affect the situation.
5. Determine the loyalties that may come into play.
6. Finally, it is required to figure out the necessary alterations to the system in order to fix the ethical situations. The facts collected shall be used in this process.

It is necessary to keep the customer data safe and secured. The ethical concerns regarding the security of data shall be analyzed with keen attention. Data security tools shall be implemented in the enterprise end of the application system in order to measure and amend the data insecurity of the system. Tools such as StorageGRID Webscale and FireHost Compliance are best in this situation as a data security service (Barsky 2016).

Task	Hazard	Risk	Priority	Control
Data Security	Lots of customer and employee data are stored in online cloud servers.	There are heavy chances of these data being stolen and manhandled.	High	This can be controlled if Telstra can build a safe data storage of their own, with trusted employees handling them (Daya 2013).
Unwanted Adverts	Various types of adverts come up within online application.	This may hurt the sentiment of various societies of people using the application due to the variedness of the adverts. People may also feel that they are opting for a service online using their own money and data, therefore the adverts are not acceptable.	Medium	This can be averted by either putting a check on what adverts are suitable for specific geographic locations. Another controlling measure would be to avoid showing 3rd party adverts at all, even though that might affect the revenue generation process.
24*7 Customer Support	One support person registers the complaint of a particular customer. When the same customer comes back for update a few hours later, a new support head might address him.	Customer may address a problem once to a support person and get agitated over it when the shift changes.	Medium	Data logs must be kept to track the history of support chat conversations with particular customers. Also, conversation ID can be provided for better issue identification.
Offers	Varied offers over the various platforms.	The varying form of offers for the application users will void the company off the existing customers who are unwilling to switch to a smartphone application for many a reasons. This will cause considerable damage to the business.	High	There must a balance of offers listed for both physical and online stores.

• The application can bring loads of opportunities for the company to expand their business all over the world.
• It would make the customers reach out to their Telstra details, just a click away.
• The amalgamation of many third party enterprises with Telstra would bring about a new scope of opportunities to improve their business terms and expand on the same ground.
• The 24*7 feature would allow the customers to converse with the customer service executive though instant messages or over the phone.

• Security issues may come up as stated above.
• Social and ethical considerations about the adverts that are featured on the application.
• Offer globalization will take place as those who cannot afford a smartphone or does not wish to purchase premium services either, they will not get access to the application and will have to purchase the same services at higher prices, offline.
• Technical and ethical issues as stated above can ruin the performance and girth of any company, if not rightfully attended.

Who are affected?

Conclusion

It can hence be concluded that any business should always consider the customers as the king of the gala. It is due to them that the application is being designed and developed and therefore they must be made aware of the fact that the company is willing to go through any long-run procedure that will help the company to thrive for perfection and customer satisfaction. It is hence necessary to identify the major ethical problems with the release of an application or internet service system, and then rectify them with through meetings and constructive discussions.

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