Moving With Times

Question: Discuss about the Moving With Times. Answer: Introduction: The article is an Interview that has been covered by Stuart Sumner in conversation with Christine Scott, Chief Product and Information Officer at Financial Times. The website of Financial Times (FT) is being redesigned and the product has been termed as Project Next. The website of FT was designed eight years back and has not seen transformation in terms of the design and functionalities. It was therefore extremely essential to re-design the site with the advancements in the technology. The new site has a lot many new components and features in terms of moving the infrastructure on cloud, enhanced data capabilities, easier options for the data scientists for the execution of the operations, social media integration, introduction of payment systems and easy subscription options, addition of new sections such as My FT, ability to handle increased user traffic and various other technically advanced options in terms of customer expectations, functional and non-functional abilities. The decision taken by Christina and her team is an excellent step to engage enhanced customer base with the Financial Times website and also to improve the website rankings. Also, the incorporation of technically advanced features will enable the site to offer better quality services to the customers. However, there will be a few areas of concerns that will be introduced with the re-designing of the site in terms of management of the changes and increased security threats and attacks that may be executed by the attackers on the site (Sumner, 2015). Comparison of Old and New Site There have been a number of enhancements in the new site of FT as compared to the older site in terms of the usability of the same. The newer website is excellently organized in terms of the layout and the sections that are present on the same. Also, the layout has been kept consistent all throughout. The re-designed web site also includes enhanced accessibility and can be accessed from desktop as well as mobile devices for improved usability for the customers. There are a number of new functionalities and features that are now added to the web site. There is a section called My FT that has been added in which the users can add their preferred sections and news alerts they would like to receive. Social media integration is a mandatory feature in the current scenario and it has been added on the new site. Users would be allowed to view tweets that are posted, post a news piece on their social accounts and likewise. Users would also be able to make the payments from varied payment options for the subscriptions online and from the mobile devices as well. The data warehouse and data capabilities have been collaborated with Amazon leading to easier data management for the data scientists along with the tools such as Birst. The site will also be able to handle increased user traffic with enhanced performance (Ft, 2016). The advantages of the re-designing of the web site include better website rankings, increased market shares, good customer feedback, better quality services and easier operations and management for the employees. There will also be a few disadvantages associated with the new site in terms of the security concerns and the management of the changes for the users and the employees. References Ft,. (2016). Financial Times. Ft.com. Retrieved 13 November 2016, from https://www.ft.com/ Sumner, S. (2015). Moving with the Times (1st ed.). computing.co.uk.