In recent years, social networks have become very popular among young people. Also, researches have shown that some students use them during their education. The paper presents the results of research conducted among students of Faculty of Economics at University of Mostar in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The aim of research was to explore what students think about and whether they will accept and use social networks in educational purposes. The results show that students have a positive attitude, but also positive experiences of "studying" by social networks because social networks help them in learning and facilitate their communication, collaboration and content sharing. Due to the positive attitude of students toward social networks, Faculty of Economics, University of Mostar and other universities also, should consider more intensive use of social networks for educational purposes. Of course, for the realization of the mentioned ideas it is also important to examine what teachers think about it?!

The paper analyzes the possibilities of applying data mining techniques to improve customer segmentation. The aim of customer segmentation is to identify and profile lead, average and other company customers and to optimize and tailor future marketing actions so the right message can reach the right customer. Different techniques and models are applied in customer segmentation, like factor and cluster analysis in analyzing company customer data. In order to get required benefits from large data volumes stored in databases or data warehouses and to find hidden relationships between data, authors used cluster analysis, one of the data mining techniques. Data mining is a process of extracting previously unknown and potentially useful and hidden patterns from large databases. The main objective of the paper is to identify the high/medium/low-profit, high/medium/low-value and low/medium/high-risk customers by one of the data mining technique customer clustering. It presents results of empirical research related to data mining in customer segmentation made in a production company which produces and distributes products like dry fruits, nuts, seeds and cereals for the market of South-East Europe.

The paper presents results of research related to the standpoints of users about the main attributes that risk management software should have. This research was based on a survey of appropriate number of companies in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The authors developed the questionnaire in order to investigate the standpoints of risk managers, quality managers and others in charge of risk management, about functionality they expect risk management software should support. Namely, in today's global environment, managers and risk managers across all lines of business are accountable for a sustainable risk framework. Adequate software support enables them to take an innovative, risk-based approach to governance and compliance, to gain a holistic, enterprisewide view of risk exposure and near-real-time risk management and monitoring.Software support for risk management process should enable organisations with efficient risk evaluation and assessment, continuous monitoring, reporting and easier improvement of the process. Results of research show the main attributes that risk management software should have in order to fulfill user expectations. Finally, the paper provides some important guidelines and suggestions for risk management software development and improvement.

Student engagement should be one of the most powerful drivers for improvement of quality teaching in higher education. As students are direct beneficiaries of quality teaching, they are able to provide crucial feedback not only on what works well but also on what they would like to be done differently and how. The paper presents results of research related to students' perception of course Accounting Information Systems (AIS) and way of its implementation at the Faculty of Economic - University of Mostar. At this course lectures include many opportunities for active student engagement through cooperative learning activities (debates, team work, and presentation of project results). The authors developed two questionnaires in order to investigate the students' understanding of AIS course at the beginning and at the end of lectures. At the first class students completed a questionnaire about their expectations from AIS lectures (content, their engagement, learning activities, learning outcomes, assessment) and at the last class they completed another questionnaire about their real experiences related to AIS lectures. Research has been conducted for last two years and it enabled authors to use its results to tailor lectures in accordance with student's expectation and accordingly to improve teaching process. DOI: 10.5901/jesr.2015.v5n1s1p147

The aim of this paper is a presentation of data mining model that could be used for the measurement of current and forecasting of the future customer profitability. The purpose of this model is to forecast activities of individual customers in the future, and to value that company could expect in doing business with them. Modern customer profitability analysis shows that product cost is just one part of the relation enterprise-customer. A general framework for defining customer profitability, besides pure financial items, has to include a lot of non-linear and non-financial elements. Data mining methods do not use conventional learning methods that suffer from imperfections such as inability to explicitly transfer the knowledge from experts to machines or nonexistence of experts' will for knowledge transfer. Data mining can identify and adopt patterns and rules that exist in historical data stored in databases and/or data warehouses. It can work equally well with nonlinear and nonfinancial elements of environment which have influence on profitability results. Neural networks approved their capability for approximate description of any continuous function. Together with robust methods of genetic algorithms used in the learning process of networks, they make a good choice in the process of selecting methods for forecasting customer profitability. The proposed model for the forecasting of the customer profitability uses two data mining methods: neural networks and genetic algorithm. The paper presents results of empirical research related to forecasting of customer determination to specific segment made in a company which produces and distributes products like dry fruits, nuts, seeds and cereals for the market of South-East Europe.

The paper presents results of research related to perception of creativity in higher education made by the authors at the University of Mostar from Bosnia and Herzegovina. This research was based on a survey conducted among teachers and students at the University. The authors developed two types of questionnaires, one for teachers and the other for students in order to investigate the perception about creativity at the University. Namely, the idea that higher education has key role in development of knowledge-based society and economy has been in the very heart of Bologna process – the overall reform of the higher education in European Union. Also, many official European Union documents identified creativity as a major driving force towards knowledge creation and social and economic advancement through the development of a knowledge society. But, the complex questions of knowledge-based society and economy could not be solved without creative, forward-looking individuals and groups who are not afraid to question established ideas and who are able to cope with the insecurity and uncertainty this entails. If today's universities, including University of Mostar, would not succeed in strengthening creativity of teaching process and education of their teachers and students, development of knowledge society could be at stake. The University of Mostar has been started with implementation of the main postulates of Bologna process since 2005. Almost ten years later, the authors wanted to examine if teachers and students of the University of Mostar are aware of the importance of creativity in higher education for development of knowledge society. That was the main reason why the authors started with research related to perception of creativity at the University of Mostar. The aim of this research was to investigate the awareness of teachers and students of the University related to the necessity to enhance creativity within and by academic community.

Internationalization, when not observed in the narrow sense of mare mobility, assumes all processes that lead to international recognition of a university. Consequently, one can think of internationalization as of all supporting processes in university’s strive for widely recognized excellence. In order to use internationalization as a drive for changes, it is necessary to observe it through different aspects: strategic documents, teaching process, RDI policy, international projects, mobility programs and quality assurance. A useful tool for monitoring success of planed processes and measures is internal benchmarking, used to bring the institution ever closer to strategic goals.

The aim of the paper is to present how usage of different software tools in solving business problems could help students of economy to better integrate theoretical knowledge from different economics subjects and to enhance their technological skills. Namely, IT plays crucial role during the problem-based learning process, serving as a critical tool for information searching, organizing and analyzing data, and presenting solutions. The paper presents the way of use of information technology in education of economists, particularly at Faculty of Economics Mostar and course named Business Intelligence (BI). It is obliged course for students of Management and Business Informatics majors. At the beginning of BI course we interviewed students and discussed their expectations related to proposed learning methods. At the end of the BI course we also interviewed students and discussed fulfilment of their expectations. Namely, BI course implements problem-based learning process through combination of the theoretical knowledge and practical problem solving by using different IT tools. Students focus attention on theoretical knowledge as well as peculiarities of solving problems. They are concentrating on operational context of the practical problem, trying to conceptualize it and deduce solutions acceptable in the project. Every student creates her/his knowledge and structure, makes sense of theories and parts of their reality in her/his own way. Applying information technology as a tool for learning in curriculum areas enables students to develop the knowledge, skills and capacity to use IT in specific field and to be more successful in achieving curriculum outcomes. Through analysis of students expectations/fulfilment related to course learning methods, paper presents how IT could reshape the educational landscape by transforming the content and modes of acquisition of learning as well as how the implementation of IT is inseparable from the process of curriculum development and implementation of problem-based learning. Keywords: Information technology, Higher education, Problem-based learning, Curriculum development, Knowledge acquisition.

This paper presents the way of use of information technology in education of economists, particularly at Faculty of Economics – University of Mostar and course named Accounting Information Systems. It shows how IT could reshape the educational landscape by transforming the content and modes of acquisition of learning as well as how the implementation of IT is inseparable from the process of curriculum development and implementation of problem-based learning.

The paper presents importance of development and implementation of appropriate key performance indicators (KPIs) at universities in order to make preconditions for better strategic management of these institutions. Strategic management of the modern universities is based on vision, mission, defined strategy and strategic goals. But after defining the main strategic goals, the universities need indicators to enable monitoring of their implementation. Therefore, universities have enormous obligation to collect, access and analyze data on their key performance indicators. Today, that is almost impossible without quality IT support. Through Tempus project SHEQA public universities in B&H developed and implemented USKPI (University System of KPI) software that provides a simple and fast method of data collection, calculation and presentation of key performance indicators necessary for the efficient management of the University. Continuous monitoring and analysis of KPI creates a basis not only for strategic planning and management of higher education institutions, but also for accreditation, evaluation, tactical planning, enrolment procedures and so on.

The aim of this paper is presentation of the model that could be used for the measurement of current and forecasting of the future customer profitability. The purpose of this model is forecasting activities of individual customers in the future, and values that company could expect doing business with them. Modern customer profitability analysis shows that product costs are only one part of the relation enterprise-customer. General framework for defining customer profitability, besides pure financial items, has to include a lot of non-linear and non-financial elements. Machine learning methods can identify and adopt patterns and rules that exist in historical data stored in data bases and/or data warehouses. Proposed model for the forecasting of the customer profitability used two machine learning methods: neural networks and genetic algorithm. The paper shows the ways how proposed methods of machine learning can respond to challenges related to the customer profitability forecasting, at the same time presenting main advantages and disadvantages of their application in that field.

Paper presents and explains ways of using Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) in order to enable continuous data availability and ensure accomplishing of business processes. It is stressed that ILM is not just technology, because ILM integrates business processes and IT in order to determine how data flows through an organization, enabling users and managers to manage data from the moment it is created to the time it is no longer needed. ILM involves all aspects of dealing with data, starting with user practices, rather than just automating storage procedures and enables more complex criteria for storage management than data age and frequency of access. In the paper is showed that ILM is solution that could offer resolving of main continuous data availability problems like the cost of managing storage, ineffective use of storage, storage growth related to data backup, replication, disaster recovery continuance and so on.