Our Specialist Fields

Business Administration

Integrated marketing management adapts products and services to customer demands and directed towards customer needs, determines the right pricing strategy, chooses the most efficient distribution channel (off and online) and communicates its performance effectively and efficiently to customers. Today, marketing management’s performance is essential for any companies’ market success.

Besides delivering technical and natural scientific content, the aim of the specialist area is to give students an insight into the ways of marketing management. The specific reason for this is that IT products and services are specialist goods and service bundles (product and service) that require both technical expertise and the corresponding field-specific marketing and sales know how in order to win new customers and deliver customer services.

Students get to know essential marketing management methods and tools, learn how to use them correctly and learn about planning approaches in the marketing process. The practical applicability of the acquired knowledge is always at the heart of the learning process.

This specialist field ranges from strategic marketing and market research to the most important methods for analysing essential marketing factors such as market, customers, competition, etc. The definition of competitive marketing strategies represents the basis for designing operative marketing and marketing plans. Apart from service marketing, online marketing and e-marketing are also of particular importance, since marketing itself has become more and more driven by the internet and its users (next level marketing – Wikis, Blogs, etc.), effectively becoming an IT science.

Information Technology

The internet has become a fundamental part in private and business lives and has contributed strongly to the development of an information and service company. The internet is an innovation engine – it serves as the basis for continuously creating business fields and fundamentally changing business models.

In the specialist area Internet and Information Technologies, students acquire necessary specialist knowledge for evaluating, using and anticipating changes in technology. Moreover, students acquire know how both in fundamental network technologies and protocols and in web 2.0 applications or network security.

Based on the principles of informatics, networks represent a core area: TCP/IP and related protocols, Ethernet, Router and Access Control Lists (ACLs) are presented in-depth. In parallel, students get an early insight into web foundations (HTML, XHTML, CSS, Javascript). While the introduction into databases and data modelling is the final step towards networked information systems, challenges arising through growing information offers are dealt with using current topics such as the semantic web or web collaborations (Wiki, tags, etc.) and solutions presented. Computer and network security expertise is emphasised on all levels.

The aim is to enable students to make sound decisions for IT strategies within their environment and implement them operatively.

Software Engineering

The team behind the specialist area Software Engineering serves as a contact person for regional businesses concerning software development processes, software analysis and design as well as programming languages. With “Proof of Concepts”, the field offers support for choosing new techniques and processes and making decisions.

Through actively participating in research programmes and open source projects, the field develops state-of-the-art, technical expertise and transfers it to the industry via business partners.

Business Informatics

Typically, business informatics is regarded as the interface between informatics and business administration. But what does this actually mean and why is this interface necessary? To answer these two questions, you have to understand that we live in a digital world, in which the use of ITs is becoming increasingly important by the day. Yet acquiring knowledge in the area of informatics is not enough, The continuous development of IT systems, IT products and IT services requires crucial consideration – how can ITs can be used effectively and efficiently to gain a competitive edge. These competitive advantages can be achieved either through ITs that specifically support business processes and therefore business strategies, or through ITs that create completely new businesses. The field of Business Informatics therefore functions as an interface between informatics and business administration and aims to successfully deal with necessary links between these two worlds in order to notice and achieve these competitive advantages.

This is the reason why students are required to acquire core competences in Business Informatics, because the field reflects the connection between informatics and business administration in shape of a Business System Engineering Approach. This approach describes that introducing ITs encompasses more than the field of IT. When introducing ITs, it is essential that IT management, process management and strategic management are considered as interdependent areas, since changes in one area leads to changes in other areas.

This specialist field consists of course units that deal with one area of business informatics (e.g. Digital Business Models 1 and 2, Process Management 1 and 2, Information Systems 1 and 2) and course units that actively emphasise the link between the three areas (Principles of Business Informatics, Case Studies in Business Informatics).