How to create permanent Aliases?

Hi All

Under my root directory I have a file called Aliases. It is owned by root (root:root) and the user (I mean root) has rwx permissions. In this file I have set some aliases like the following

alias a="cd /opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppAerver/Profiles"

When I run the above alias command from CLI it works for that particular terminal session. I want to make the aliases permanent and searched on the net. Followed various suggestions for .bashrc, .profile. /etc/profile etc and they did not work

The other thing is when I run/execute the script from the CLI (./Aliases) the exit status (I mean echo $?) returns 0 (Zero) value and still the aliases will not work. How to get this done?

Thanks in advance

chrs0302