Introduction & Overview of the Company
Marks and Spencers is a large UK based retailer with 683 branches in 2 continents. Following the deregulation of the UK financial sector in the mid eighties the company decided to use its experience, capital, and brand power to branch into the lucrative financial services industry offering personal loans, life insurance & pensions, and savings & investments services such as Unit Trusts and ISAs through the company Marks and Spencers Financial Services. Financial Services is now one of the fastest expanding areas of Marks & Spencers, MSFS employs more than 1,400 staff at its purpose built headquarters in Chester, and has dedicated financial services areas in 70 M&S stores across the country. The Information Systems department has 50 employees who come from analysis, design, & programming backgrounds, much of which has been gained with Marks & Spencers plc. The majority of these employees are based in the Chester head office, and systems are developed ‘in-house’. IS projects under development include the introduction of Individual Savings Accounts, with other likely future projects including telephone banking, credit cards, and auto/property insurance.
The fact that MSFS has entered the Financial Services Sector comparatively recently and with a established IS knowledge base from the parent company has meant that existing information systems have been well developed in terms of technology and are compliant with the latest industry regulations. Therefore there is little or no need for redevelopment of existing systems in the short to medium term, and the ISD focus is almost exclusively on new market areas requiring Information Systems that can be started from scratch. The main exceptions to this are the possibility of introducing data warehousing to tap the potential of both MSFS’ and the parent company’s client database to better target MSFS customers, and the need to adapt existing systems for the introduction of the Euro, projects which will involve redesign of existing data stores and software.
The company has grown very quickly, and IS projects have consequently grown considerably as can be seen by the size of the IT department. While there are still small to medium sized projects, some that are currently being considered will be on quite a large scale with several senior analysts working on each project. These projects are anticipated to require an IT department expansion of 50% over the next two years.
Although MSFS’ IS projects share certain common characteristics in terms of their requirements, such as the need for a common ISD structure across projects, they vary considerably in size and strategic importance, with future developments looking likely expand those differences.
Third Star Financial Services is an “un-banked” business that was built from a foundation of several money transfer operations that can be transact through an agent or an online facility since 1996. Third Star’s goal and objective is to develop and implement an enterprise architecture platform for the organization that is more streamlined and leaned with consistent policies and procedures throughout the company. A consolidated, centralized and standardized single version of the business structure and a modernize technology that can provide ease and flexibilities to their new and existing customers, in addition to their support staff and management teams.
The project will bring several changes to the company; it will first expand the current physical IT environment. It will provide the ability to increase the storage capacity of the current storage requirement and expected growth of data, while establishing a new data warehouse and business analytics applications and user interfaces. The project will also improve security by establishing security policies and it will leverage newer cloud based technology to provide a highly redundant, flexible and scalable IT environment while also allowing the ability to establish a low cost disaster recovery site.
As Phoenix approaches the stream it becomes obvious that the spirit and imagination inside of her is that of a child. It almost appears that Phoenix has reached the fountain of youth, which releases the child inside of her. She takes a large first step raising her knee high walking onto the log that resemble that of a marching band, while holding the small cane straight out as if to point the direction.
In “A Worn Path” colors are used to emphasize the depth and breadth of the story, and to reinforce the parallel images of the mythical phoenix and the protagonist Phoenix Jackson. Eudora Welty’s story is rich with references to colors that are both illustrative and perceptive, drawing us in to investigate an additional historical facet of the story.
'A Worn Path' is the tale of the unstoppable love and care of a grandmother for her grandchild. Phoenix Jackson is Eudora Welty's main character and protagonist in A Worn Path.? Phoenix is an old, frail woman who attempts to proceed on a long and treacherous journey through the woods to Natchez. Phoenix strives forward despite frequent obstacles in her way that include her own failing health and her grandchild's slim chance of survival. As she takes this prolonged trek across the woods, many of her characteristics are revealed. Her tenacity, senility, and consideration that she displays throughout her long worn path emphasize her character.
The concept culture have some difficult meanings. One of them is culture as in music, preforming, theatre and so. The other meaning of it is culture as in Peoples Identity. It tells something about who you are, where you come from, and what you believe in, in this way, we can see that People have different culture and its all about where you live and where you have been raised.
Phoenix Jackson is an elderly African American who lives in the South after the Civil War. Phoenix has endured many things in her life, from small trials to some as big as slavery. From these trials, Phoenix Jackson has developed traits such as selflessness, determination, and a lively spirit. As the protagonist of Welty’s story, Phoenix represents the fire and the character that all should possess while traveling through life. All though Phoenix is very old and can hardly bend to tie her shoe, the strengths of her character help Phoenix overcome her weaknesses and continue on her quest.
Eudora Welty’s Phoenix Jackson, the old African American woman in “A Worn Path,” is primarily an altruistic human being. Welty gives us a picture of Phoenix when she states that, “She wore a dark striped dress reaching down to her shoe tops, and an equally long apron of bleached sugar sacks, with a full pocket: all neat and tidy, but every time she took a step she might have fallen over her shoelaces, which dragged from her unlaced shoes” (par. 2). Despite Phoenix’s ragged appearance, she is on an important journey to alleviate the suffering of her dear grandson, which brings upon an enlightened and enduring characteristic about her. Welty reveals Phoenix’s qualities in three areas of the story: Phoenix’s name, the journey, and the visit to
Each of the company’s 82 stores is operated by a SM, who has a lot of autonomy. The 82 store are organized into 9 geographical regions. The RMs are responsible for providing oversight and advice to the SMs, whom had little formal education. On the top of these two manager levels are the CMs, who are responsible for a range of centralized functions including purchasing, human resources, marketing, real estate, and investor relations.
Marks & Spencer is one of the UK's foremost retailers of clothing, foods, homeware and financial services, boasting a weekly customer base of 10 million in over 300 UK stores. Marks & Spencer operate in 30 countries worldwide, and has a group turnover in excess of £8 billion. It has specific values, missions and visions. It’s main vision is ‘to be the standard against which all others are measured’, it’s main mission is ‘to make aspirational quality accessible to all’, and it’s main values are quality, service, innovation and trust. (www.marksandspencer.co.uk).
According to the annual report of Mark& Spencer, they has been set up 776 stores in the Uk and aim to keep selling high quality ,great value food and staying ahead in womenswear, lingerie and menswear. Moreover, M&S has attributed the high level of trust on the high street, and has also concentrated on ensuring their corporate governance is meaningful, relevant and underpin their decision-marking with high quality in all areas of strategy, performance, responsibility and accountability. Their collective and individual performance review is constructed by honest and constructive feedback to make the border play the biggest role in the boardrom. The goverance framework is also published on their website. Therefore, M&S's shareholders and stakeholders can easily find what standards the board of M&S set for themself.
Rite Aide has choices in the solution that our organization can implement to solve these financial systems integration issues. The main issue facing it’s Financing and Accounting department is the lack of standardized systems, which includes software, data interfaces, and processes. Here are some solutions, Solution 1: Maintain and Enhance Existing Systems, the organization has three very different Finance and Accounting functions that need to be consolidating to provide a seamless environment that is able to grow with the business. One option would be to continue focusing the attention of IT and Financial Services Divisions on maintaining and enhancing the existing systems. This would require no upfront capital expense, but does not meet our short or long-term business requirements.
Culture refers to the cumulative deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, and material objects and possessions acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving. Culture is the systems of knowledge shared by a relatively large group of people…Culture in its broadest sense of cultivated behavior; a totality of a person’s learned, accumulated experience which is socially transmitted, or more briefly, behavior through social learning (http://www.tamu.edu/faculty/choudhury/culture.html).
Initially the bank’s core banking system was product oriented, but the need of the hour was to develop a customer oriented system, because the challenge is to build customer loyalty, cross sell, and enhance repeat business.
The advancements in the technological world have allowed supermarket chains and other national stores to quickly dominate the market and are driving out the concept of the ‘local stores’. This surge in the market has seen shares rise and profits bulge with the three main contenders in mind being Sainsburys, Safeways and Tescos who now serve the whole of the UK between them and are the household names of the shopping world. The ICT input to these businesses is vital in that it provides speedy service; controls stock levels and will even allow bank balance transfers to be carried out with minimal difficulty or technical experience.