Tesco

Tesco is one of the world's largest retailers with operations in 14 countries, employing over 500,000 people and serving millions of customers every week. Tesco was founded in 1919 by Jack Cohen from a market stall in London’s East End. Over the years Tesco has grown and it has also become the leading retailer in the UK.


Task:

Tesco has been having a rough time recently. Its cutting campaign last Christmas was beaten by its competitors. Tesco's first half pre-tax also fell by 12%. The company has been focusing on its global growth and leaving its stores in Britain. The shopping experience on its stores is becoming boring and the marketing campaigns have been lacking in energy and enthusiasm which are not enough to persuade and attract British shoppers. However, Tesco is still considered as one of the biggest retailers and these are only minor problems for them. Tesco has the biggest base in Britain, biggest in internet shopping and it has also the biggest land bank. Tesco still holds about 31% of the grocery market whilst Sainsbury’s and Asda have about 17% each.


                       

                                   

Unit 2: E-Commerce Online Shopping

How to purchase an item online?

Very is one the UK's online retailer. Their products include clothing, electronics, furniture, homeware and jewellery. Their website allows people to browse and purchase items or online shopping.

•  The first step in purchasing an item from Very is to go to their website (www.very.co.uk) and click the 'Sign In/Register' located on the to left side next to their logo on their home page as shown below.

• If you are already a registered customer and you forgot your password, you simply need to click 'Sign In/Register' or 'My Account' and then click 'Forgotten your password' under the 'Existing Customer'. Then you need to enter your email address, date of birth and postcode in order for the company to send you your password to your email address.

• The information needed for registering are shown below:

 



 - Email address and password are needed for registration in order for customers to log in on the 

   website and purchase items that they want.

 - Personal details like name, date of birth, contact number and home address are also needed in order

  for the company to identify whether the person registering is a real person and not someone or

  something fake that might harm their website.

 - There is also a sign on the upper right side of the registration section that says that the website is

  secured. This allows the customer to know that the information they are giving are secured.

 

• After putting all the information needed, the customers need to click continue and must read the Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy before clicking the 'Agree' button. After agreeing to the website's terms and conditions and policies, the customers are now able to log in and shop to their website.

• If for example customers want to buy a mobile phone, they need to enter how many mobile phone they want to purchase on the 'Quantity' section and they need to choose whether they want insurance on the 'Mobile Phone Insurance' section. After this, they need to click the 'Add to Basket' button and then clicking the 'Go to the Basket' button.

• The shopping basket items, list all the items that customers want to purchase. The customers need to click the 'Continue Securely' button to buy the items they want.

• After this the customers are allowed to choose delivery options they want on the delivery section. The customers can also change and add an address where they want the parcels to be delivered by clicking 'view' or  'Add address' as shown below:

           The delivery options are:

• Free Next Day Delivery With Collect+ - the delivery is free but the customers need to collect the parcel to their nearest Collect+ store.
• Standard Next Day Delivery - The delivery costs £3.95 and the parcel will be delivered the very next day when the orders are place before 9pm Monday through Friday. The parcels are delivered directly to cutomers' home address.
• Specified Day - The delivery costs £4.95 and this allows customers to choose date and time of delivery they want their orders to be delivered. The parcels are also delivered directly to the customers' home address.

           When customers finally decided what type of delivery they want and the address they want
           their orders to be delivered, then they can click 'Continue to payment' button.

• Very customers have different ways to pay their orders: by card, Very credit, phone, bank or building society, PayPoint, post and at the Post Office.

2.1 Information in Modern Organisiations

Unit 2 Digital Economy - 2.1 Information in Modern Organisiations - Types of Organsation and their Use of ICT

A division of a country's population based upon the economic area in which that population is employed. Many economists recognize the following five economic sectors; the primary sector which includes agriculture, mining and other natural resource industries; the secondary sector covering manufacturing, engineering and construction; a tertiary sector for the service industries, the quaternary sector for intellectual activities involving education and research and the quinary sector reserved for high level decision makers in government and industry.

Economy Sectors:

• Public Sector
• Non - Profit
• Private Sector

Task:

• The article below shows how the Blockbuster company flop and failed. This is because of the increase of online sale of DVDs and the growth of online streaming services for movies and shows. Blockbuster failed to respond to the changes of technology and the rise of these online services. Therefore they are now struggling and have put thousands of their employees' jobs under threat.

• The company HMV also failed to react to online services and at risk of closure of all their stores. As explained on the article below, HMV did not fully take advantage of the internet. Therefore they were not competitive enough to compete with Amazon and iTunes. This has led them to lose customers and low sales.

                                 

Activity 1

Different Types of Organisation
Commercial	Public Service	Non-Profit
Tesco	Ministry of Defence	British Heart Foundation
Amazon.co.uk	West Mercia police force	Newcastle United FC
Boots The Chemist	Hemel Hempstead library	Echoes Under-11 youth football team
TVR	Football Association
Patel’s Newsagent	BBC
NTL	London Ambulance Service
	Sir John Lawes School
	Withington Hospital

Activity 2

• The different forms of information that are presented on NHS website are the explanations of various health conditions and treatments, topics on healthy living, health news and health services around people's areas.
• The different methods that can be used to find information are by typing or entering keywords or terms then clicking the search button and also by clicking the heading of a particular area that people want to look.
• The different audiences for the information are for adults and teenagers who may want to seek general help for their health. The information are presented differently, for example, adult audiences who are concern about flu are presented an information by this website through video.

Source: http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/economic-sector.html#ixzz2IiGMFoZE
            www.nhs.uk

Unit 1.4 Local Divide

Bridging the Gap: Examples of Initiatives

There have been and still are numerous initiatives to bridge the gap sponsored by the national government, local government, private industry and charities. These are:

• UK Online is a major government project started in 2001 and this give access to people in the community to help them learn new ICT skills.
• University for Indutry(Ufi) is a partnership between the government and private industry aimed at improving job prospects for individuals and bossting competitiveness for businesses through the use of Learn Direct centres.
• Learn Direct aims to teach adults on how to use ICT.
• British Educational Communication and Technology Association (BECTA) aims to help education professionals such as teachers to make the most of ICT.
• Wired up Communities initiative connects seven disadvantaged communities to the internet to test what impact this would have on their lives.
• Computers within reach is an initiative  aimed at helping learners on benefits by enhancing their employment prospects and learning opportunities through providing  access to computers.
• Get Started campaign aims at giving a kick start to access for the elderly, the unemployed, the disabled and other disadvantaged groups to show them the benefits from accessing IT.
• Community Access to Lifelong Learning(CALL) aims to enable schools, libraries and other lifelong learning institutions to become conneceted to the internet.

Task:

Learn Direct

What is its purpose?

- Aim to transform the skills and productivity of the working population by using technology to bring people together to work, share and learn online.
 

How it relates to the digital divide?
- This relates to digital divide because it helps UK to reduce digital divide by helping people to learn ICT.
 

Who are its main target clients?
- It specialises in teaching adults on how to use ICT in school, libraries and colleges. It is also working with businesses to provide them with the skilled staff they need to thrive
 

What are its strengths and weaknesses?
- One strength of learn direct is it helps people to learn how to use ICT in order to find a job online. This also helps reduce digital divide in the UK. Another stregth is it also provides qualification that can be used in finding a job.
-One weakness of learn direct is it does not provide online lessons and the learners still need to go school, libraries and colleges.
 

What improvements could be made?

- One improvement that could be made is it should provide online lessons for the learners who are not able to go to learn direct centres.
 

Source: www.learndirect.co.uk
 

Unit 1.3 Digital Divide - Worldwide

ICT can be very empowering for example, it can be cost-effective.

Broadcasting:
Digital broadcasting is an example of both of an empowering technology and of the political barriers that sometimes may stall the elimination of the digital divide. Satellite broadcasting allows geographically remote areas to receive news and information in a manner that was previously unavailable or difficult to achieve. This provides educational, entertainment and informative benefits for the populations of otherwise remote places.
However, in some states such as some in the Middle East and North Africa, digital TV is a major problem this is because access to Western values and norm is not universally regarded as a good thing.

Mobile Phones:
The use of cellular phones has improved the quality of life in rural Pakistan and Bangladesh because it allows people to stay in touch in remote areas.

Governance:
Low technology solutions are not the only answer to problems. A major challenge often comes in the form of governments of the under-served nations.

Tasks:
Case Study: Laos

Source: Applied ICT book
             www.cia.gov/

Civil Rights

Civil rights refer to the rights of citizens to political and social freedom and equality.
ICT has also an impact to civil rights. Technology is used to monitor and control people in order to keep society safe. Data or information of people are monitored or can be gathered and this compromises the people's right to privacy and civil right as a whole.

Task:

• One of the issue that affected by the ICT is the gay rights. The article below shows how information gathered from a newspaper could lead to a murder of a gay activist. It also shows how a petition against Uganda's anti-homosexuality bill can be done online.

• Another issue that affected by the technology is the rights of neighbours. The article below shows how a factory worker woman created noise nuisance that affected her neighbours in Strafforshire. She continued to persist her behaviour and as a result the Environmental Health Officers put up a monitoring equipment in a neighbour's home to monitor noise nuisance.

• Technology also helps to regulate the safety of people. The article below shows how the US government planning to change their gun laws. As a result of a terrible incident wherein a man killed 20 children and six adults with an assault rifle, the US president is negotiating with the congress to ban assault weapons and reinstate strict background checks on those people who are buying high-capacity guns. The strict background checks could help to stop crime such as murder.

• Another issue that affected by the technology is the rights of job seekers. The UK government launched a jobwatch website where job seekers need to use it to apply for three jobs every week. If they fail to do this then they will be withdrawn from their benefits.

• Some countries issue death penalty for homosexual acts whilst other countries do not have any legislation for homosexuality. The article below shows the different legislation about homosexuality in different countries:

 

The Open University

The Open University is the world's first successful distance teaching university. It was founded with the belief that communications technology could bring high quality degree-level learning to people.

Why was it set up?

It was set up to open up higher education to everyone regardless of their circumtances or where they live. They have students of all ages and backgrounds: school students wanting expererience of university level, school leavers who choose to beging their careers while they study for a degree, people wanting to develop or update their skills, or change career entirely, and retired people wanting to explore new interests and keep mentally active.

When did it start?

The OU opened to its first students – 25,000 of them - in January 1971 with a choice of four multi-disciplinary foundation courses in the arts, social sciences, science or maths.

How was it different from other Universities?

The Open University has developed its own style of distance learning called 'supported open learning'.

• Open learning means their students work whenever they choose in their own homes, workplace or at a library or study centre, and can plan their study around their other commitments.
• Supported open learning means that their students have support from a tutor or online forum, they have students advisers and study facilities in theor own region and they have contact with other students at tutorials,day schools or through online conferencing, online social networks, informal study groups and events.

How many students have been taught by them?

• The Open University has more than 250,000 students.
• In November 2010, 18,475 students studied directly with the University overseas and more than 36,800 students on validated programmes.
• More than 12,000 people with disabilities study with the University each year.

Source: http://www.open.ac.uk/