Information Technology in Lloyds Bank: An Individual Report

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Individual Report
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Abstract
In this study, the role of IT in the communication process, storage of information and
removal of human errors has been identified. The findings also included the ethical issue of
spyware attack and the social issue of cyber bullying within the services industry. Different
types of networking technologies such as WAN, LAN and WLAN were also identified. The
importance of intranet in the storage of information and the role of internet in the facilitation
of effecting marketing within the industry were found. Lastly, the stages involved in the
system development cycle were identified and discussed.
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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................4
Literature review........................................................................................................................5
Analysis and discussion.............................................................................................................9
Discuss the importance of Intranet and Internet in your business...........................................12
Conclusion................................................................................................................................15
Reference List..........................................................................................................................16
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Introduction
Information Technology is one of the science’s major innovations. IT has made it easier for
organisations to collect and store business data for future usage. In this study, there will be a
detailed overview of how many types of networking used in Lloyds Bank. In addition, the
role of IT in banking sectors, along with their pros and cons will be thoroughly analysed in
this study. Lloyds Bank is one of the oldest commercial bank in Britain, headquartered in
London, UK. It has been in operation when Sampson Lloyd and John Taylor established the
bank in 1765. Currently, there are around 75,000 employees working for the organisation. In
financial year, 2018 Lloyds Bank has earned revenue of 2,200 GBP, making it one of the
most successful banks in UK (Lloydsbank.com, 2019).
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Literature review
Identify the role of IT in the success or failure of your chosen organisation
Information Technology (IT) plays an important role in boosting the communication process
within an organisation. The use of emails through IT makes the process of exchanging
information easier and convenient. It provides a structure to all the employees working in the
services industry and helps in recording and monitoring of the information for future
references. Another primary role of IT is removal of human errors with increased use of
technologies. The efficiency of IT in effective functioning of service industry is larger than
human staff. Thus, IT can be considered as a potential replacement of human resource in its
application to the activities within the service sector.
The induction of IT within services industry has facilitated storage and proper management
of information. The application of Management Information Systems (MIS) helps in the
storage of information about the activities and performance within the service sector. The
stored information can be monitored and checked to record to track the activities of the
organisation and the contribution of employees in its execution. This information can also be
used by organisations in planning and execution of future tasks and allocation of suitable
employees in it, based on their performance and skills determined through the analysis on the
stored information.
The Actor-network theory is concerned with the identification of required infrastructure in
achievement of technological advancements within an industry (thesocietypages.org, 2019).
The application of this theory helps an organisation in the formation of the surrounding
environment to accelerate and suit the development of technology. This theory helps in
development of appropriate technology within the services industry that will ease its
functioning. It provides a foundation in establishment of technology to reduce human errors
and accelerate business operations within hew industry.
Find ethical and social issues that pertain to running businesses
The primary ethical issue concerning the services industry is an attack on the information of
the employees and consumers. The spyware attack or malware attack is referred to the
accessing of information of the personnel of an organisation against the permission of the
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concerned company. Such attacks could be misguided and used against the interests of the
attacked individuals, raising ethical concerns within the organisation. Cyber bullying is the
rising social concern due to the use of IT in the service industry. The accounts of individuals
can be hacked and gained access to, by cyber attackers (lawnow.org, 2019). The personal
data of individuals can be spiced up and used in the execution of anti-social activities. The
data of employees and clients of services industry are stored in secured databases. However, a
breach in the security of this information can gain unlimited access to personal information of
many individuals to the cyber attackers. The reduction in the employment rate within the
services industry with the increased use of IT has further raised the social issues concerning
its application. The addition of increased and advanced technology in the operations of the
industry to reduce the situations of human errors has led to a rising social issue of
unemployment among the people, giving them a cause to resent the introduction of IT.
Identify and differentiate between different types of networking technologies
Users of the banking sector have to access their accounts on many occasions on regular basis.
In order to provide those services networking has become an integral part of banking
industry. There is a number of networking technologies, which are used in banking sectors
for their operational purposes. They are LAN, WAN, PAN, MAN, WLAN and so on.
Local Area Network (LAN)
As commented by Zhao and Dong (2015), LAN is one of the most commonly used networks
in the industry. It is the simplest network among all the available networks. It connects
several computers locally, within a building or office premises. They are used to share
information among those connected system. It is connected using routers for faster
operations. It is very much helpful for banks to operate their computers locally within the
building.
Wide Area Network (WAN)
WAN is a little more complex compared to LAN. In this type of network computers can be
connected across a comparatively large distance. It helps in connecting different types of
smaller networks including LAN. With the help of WAN users can roam without any
disturbance provided users stay within the range of WAN. This helps the different branches
of the banks to maintain their operations.
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Figure 1: Different types of network
(Source: searchmobilecomputing.techtarget.com, 2019)
Personal Area Network (PAN)
PAN is the most basic networking type among all that establishes the connection between
various devices under an individual user’s range (searchmobilecomputing.techtarget.com,
2019). PAN is generally found in small kiosks, which banks uses for lightning account
opening, customer services purposes.
Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN)
WLAN, as the name suggests is the wireless communication network such as wifi, which
allows devices to connect internally. Similar to LAN, it also operates within a small range.
Unlike LAN, it does not need physical connections which makes WLAN is very user
friendly.
Discuss the importance of Intranet and Internet in your business
Intranet
It is based on internet technology, which is an internal network of an organisation. It helps
different bank branches to work in collaboration and to share sensitive information and
resources among the employees securely. Different banks use intranet exclusively to do
different operations. According to Morschheuser et al. (2015), intranet helps the banks to
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monitor their operations of different branches and make strategies accordingly. It includes
details about consumers’ accounts, their investments, safety features and so on. It also helps
banks to decide what information the bank wants to share with their customers. For instance,
banks have different customer base like premium, moderate, basic. Using intranet banks can
have the facility to provide services and offers to their different segment of customers.
Internet
Internet is the bigger version of intranet. It is a computer network, which is not limited to any
physical range. It helps to share all kinds of information without any limitations. Internet
provides the banks with almost endless opportunities. It helps the banks in marketing. One of
the major breakthrough that internet has given to the banks is internet banking which has
proven to be the best offering. It helps customers to do all kinds of banking operations like
paying monthly bills, fund transfers and so on, without being present physically in the banks
(Thebalance.com, 2019). It also has reduced paperwork, hence saves a lot of time. Banks can
use the internet to show their progress, different products to the community. Internet is very
much crucial for doing market research and set up new strategies. Internet also helps banks to
provide online customer support in order to provide better customer experience.
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Analysis and discussion
Identify the role of IT in the success or failure of your chosen organisation
One of the most competitive industries is the banking sector. Banking sectors have evolved
through the ages, with the up gradation of technologies. Now, banking sectors are heavily
dependent on information technology, so is Lloyds Bank. This bank like every other is using
IT in their business operation. IT has reduced Lloyds’ operational cost, marketing cost. In
addition, IT has improved their efficiency into work. IT has helped Lloyds Bank to offer
various services like debit cards, credit cards, internet banking, electronic data interchange
(EDT), mobile banking, telephone banking, fund transfer facility and so. All together, they
have helped Lloyds Bank to provide better customer facility and experience. This is a highly
competitive market and in order to stay in market and do excellent business banks need to
offer their consumers’ best in class facilities, otherwise they may lose customers.
They use IT for survey and analysing purposes to determine the need and the needy segment
of the community, hence they extend their helping hands. They launched Helping Britain
Prosper Plan in the year 2014, Lloyds bank to help people of UK in order to improve their
livelihood (Lloydsbank.com, 2019). These factors altogether worked in favour to help them
in winning Bank of The Year, UK for 15 years in a row
(Commercialbanking.lloydsbank.com, 2019).
IT has served and improved the business of Lloyds Bank immensely. On the contrary, there
always remains a threat of data theft. Hence, customers’ personal information has become so
much vulnerable nowadays. On the other side, it increased their expenses in other fields. For
instance, because of dependency on the internet services and online facilities, Lloyds Bank
has to invest a lot of money for online services, tele callers and so on. In addition, Lloyds
bank suffered from a DDOS attack in 2017causing huge turmoil in their operation
(Bankinfosecurity.com, 2019).
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Find ethical and social issues that pertain to running businesses
Everything comes with its own sets of pros and cons and IT is no exception to that. IT has
given the banking industry many utilities in terms of operations, customer service; in
addition, it has left banks with various social threats and ethical issues. In the year 2017,
Lloyds Bank had faced a huge setback due to cyber attack, known as DDOS attack. DDOS
stands for distributed denial of service. It is an evil motive to disrupt the system by injecting
malware into the server of any targeted organisation. Due to this attack, customers had to face
hardships where they were able to monitor their account. However, they could not perform
any activity. Hence, they became dubious about the security of the bank and their own
personal data (Bankinfosecurity.com, 2019). Introduction of IT in banking industry has
automated most of the works. This has cost numerous jobs in UK. This has increased
unemployment in UK. In addition to that, there remains a probability that hacker might use
customers’ personal data to bully and to extract money from them.
Identify and differentiate between different types of networking technologies
Like all other banks in this industry, Lloyds Bank also uses various networking systems for
their different operational purpose.
Local Area Network (LAN)
Lloyds Bank is a digitalised bank, hence, for their in office operational purpose LAN is used
widely (Comer, 2018). It helps them to stay interconnected with other various devices like
computers, printers, laptops and many other digital devices. It improves their work efficiency
and helps in doing work faster.
Wide Area Network (WAN)
In Lloyds Bank they use WAN for comparatively large areas. It helps the digital devices to be
connected where the office bigger comparatively. In smaller range LAN is effective whereas
for bigger are WAN is required. Approximately, they serve similar purpose for the
organisation.
Personal Area Network (PAN)
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For marketing purpose, Lloyds Bank often holds various campaigns where they send their
mobile van out to the streets. Those mobile vans operate remotely using PAN. They generally
have one or two computers, POS machines and so on and these remains connected using
PAN.
Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN)
Lloyds Bank uses wireless local area network to serve their customers who come to their
bank branches. They offer free wifi to do any important work on the go. This helps gaining
popularity among customers. In 2017, Lloyds Bank became the first bank in UK to provide
child friendly wifi in their High Street branches (Lloydsbankinggroup.com, 2019).
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Discuss the importance of Intranet and Internet in your business
Intranet and internet both are used equally for various operations of Lloyds Bank. Lloyds
Bank have over 1100 bank branches across UK and Wales along with 75,000 employees and
over 10 millions of customers (Lloydsbank.com, 2019). Therefore, it is very much important
to maintain a database of their employees and customers that too very securely where the
application of intranet comes into action. Lloyds Bank has their own server, which they use
to store their valuable data, as these are private and sensitive. Any theft or breaching can
affect their business.
Internet is used for mostly their advertisement purpose and market analysis. The market is
competitive, therefore to stay ahead of their rivals, promotion is a must need. With the help of
internet, Lloyds Bank promotion their products to attract more customers. Other than that, the
marketing department of bank research the market in order to find out what is most important
for their successful run in the business. Lloyds Bank also has the internet banking facility to
offer their customers hassle free experience. According to Amin (2016), using internet
banking they can do everything with their mobile phones, not being physically present at the
bank. This is important because people are so busy nowadays that they do not have time to
stand in a queue.
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