The Administrative role fits into the organisation by being Essay

The Administrative role fits into the organisation by being a fundamental stepping stone in our BAU work. In the diagram below in appendix 3, you can see the chain of command for our department and our lines of communication.

The Functional Structure puts specialists in the top positions of various departments. This allows them to deal with problems at multiple levels as well as:

• Three authorities exist- Line, Function and Staff

• Unity of Command DOES NOT apply to such businesses

• Economical – functions are not repeated

Appendix 3: Organisation/Department Chart

This Structure is only one of the few that are used at Barclays.

Dependant on whether you work on a project or are part of Top management and at the top of the business ladder, matrix structures and divisional structures are used to allow for more resources, open communication and flexibility to tailor to such circumstances.

The Administrator Responsibilities

My responsibilities as an Administrator consist of enforcing the minimum acceptance criteria (MAC) and ensuring it is adhered to by everyone who is reviewing a change or raising one.

These criteria consist of things like having a pre-implementation plan or testing, implementation plan, step by step back out plan, full risk and impact analysis on what the impact would be if the change was to go wrong etc. This needs to be kept up to date especially when it comes to using new updates or even new tools to conduct such activities. If this is not enforced or updated, it runs a risk of disruption and outages happening which can lead to incidents. These can have a huge effect on how customers perceive Barclays as a company. For example, a change might be made to update a transaction system but might not have been tested on a lower environment beforehand or be poorly planned. It is then implemented on the live environment and goes wrong. A set of merchants then get paid the wrong amount due to an error in the code that they would have found if they had tested the change beforehand or the transaction might fail all together leaving our customers empty handed. This will result in a damaged reputation and unsatisfied customers. Therefore, by enforcing the MAC I ensure change raisers have the right level of detail minimising the level of failure. I also ensure that changes are within their financial limits by asking change raisers for order book numbers (OBN) and sign off from their Service Level Managers/Project Leads. This ensure that any expenses that need to be paid towards a change are thoroughly checked though and approved to avoid any loss in money.

On top of that I keep regular track of our Change Validating Controls (CVCs). Just like the MAC, I ensure that these are up to date with the BAU work that we do in accordance to the tools we use and any regulations that have been put in place. I make suggestions to improve these where I see fit such as in the methods that we retrieve our data.

Another administrative function I follow is auditing our daily work. Our team has a SharePoint and a Shared Drive which contains all of our CAB meeting agenda and minutes, offline reviews and other relevant data as shown in appendix 3. This enable us to comply with any audit requirements that may arise by having evidence of work saved proving I and the team are following the regulations set in place with due diligence.

Appendix 4: Change Assurance SharePoint

These administrative functions that we carry out have huge organisational benefits. They ensure that there is no reputational, financial or regulatory damage caused by change as explained in the paragraphs above. We have dashboards specially made to enable us to see how well we are doing or what areas may need more enforcement and why.

External Factors

Element Factor Business Impact

Political

A political factor can be war.

The impact of war can be huge on a business like Barclays. It can cause employment rates to plummet or even lead to the collapse of the business

Economic

An economic factor is the UK leaving the European union as it poses a significant challenge to many banks including Barclays.

The impact it could have on Barclays is that the British pound could go down in value and obviously that will be bad for them as it is a huge bank society.

Sociological

The sociological factor includes changes in demographics, lifestyles or changes in fashion, labour and social mobility.

These factors can be threats but also opportunities however this mean we must reconsider the products we are providing in order to appeal to the correct customer base (demographic).

Technological

The technological factor is the block chain technology and the use of it for banks.

Barclays one of a few banks that has started processing transactions based on Block chain technology and they have benefitted the company.

Legal

The legal factor is the GDPR legislation being put in force.

This means Barclays will have to train employees and enforce new process to avoid penalties and regulatory issues

Environmental

The environmental factor is reduction in the carbon foot print

The impact on Barclays of reducing the carbon footprint may mean more expenses to research other materials to manufacture products with

Compliance to Policy, Regulation and Legislation

The importance of compliance in any business is high. It can make or break your business and be a determining factor of it’s success. Understanding the reasons for different policies, regulations and