Is Development Methodologies In Financial :: essays research papers

Introduction & adenylic acid Overview of the CompanyMarks and Spencers is a rangy UK based retailer with 683 branches in 2 continents. Following the deregulating of the UK financial sector in the mid eighties the bon ton persistent to use its experience, capital, and brand power to branch into the lucrative financial operate industry offering personal loans, life insurance & amp pensions, and nest egg & investments services such as Unit Trusts and ISAs through the community Marks and Spencers Financial Services. Financial Services is now one of the red-hot expanding atomic number 18as of Marks & Spencers, MSFS employs more than 1,400 staff at its purpose construct headquarters in Chester, and has dedicated financial services argonas in 70 M&S stores crosswise the country. The training Systems department has 50 employees who come from analysis, design, & programming backgrounds, much of which has been gained with Marks & Spencers plc. The legal age of thes e employees are based in the Chester head office, and systems are developed &8216in-house&8217. IS projects under development include the introduction of Individual nest egg Accounts, with other likely future projects including telephone banking, credit cards, and auto/ dimension 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 living tuition systems have been well developed in impairment 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 strong suit 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 depot to tap the potential of both MSFS&8217 and the parent company&8217s client database t o 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 presently 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 following(a) two years.Although MSFS&8217 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 flavour likely expand those differences.