Case Study: Sky-High Airlines
Background
Sky-High Airlines (SHA) owns a number of small airline companies, based in different
countries across the globe. Sky-High Airlines was once the industry leader and has
enjoyed a significant market share for several decades, but recently pressures from a
rival conglomerate of airlines, focused on low-cost strategy, has forced SHA to
rethink its corporate strategy of providing luxury travel at a premium price.
At a recent board meeting it was announced by the CEO that Sky-High Airlines must
lower its operating costs to avoid falling further behind its new competition. It has
been left to the executives to figure out how costs are going to be lowered, whilst
maintaining a premium quality of service to its customers.
Amelia Earhart, the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of Sky-High Airlines, has for a
long time been trying to unify the global approach to processes and disparate
booking systems across the group. She has been given the job of reviewing the
technology available and providing a cost effective solution to regain its market share.
Sky-High Airlines
Recently, Sky-High Airlines acquired Fresh Air (FA) to expand into a new market,
South Africa. Besides expansion, one of the main reasons for attaining Fresh Air was
an industry-leading booking system, based on open source technologies which many,
including the CEO of SHA, believe is a source of competitive advantage.
At present the booking systems of the airlines within the group are disparate as a
result of historical acquisitions, which left each airline more or less as it was
operationally. Aside from Fresh Air, all other airlines within the group have different
bespoke booking systems.
Amelia has been thinking how she can capitalise on the acquisition of Fresh Air to
build a universal booking system. The biggest challenge facing Amelia is to put
together a persuasive argument in order to gain the necessary support and backing
required.
However, Amelia is already experiencing some resistance to her fact finding from
some of the global business locations within the group, with some of the IT managers
who have responsibility for the current booking systems voicing concern about the
move to a single booking system. Furthermore, she is aware that the board does not
have a good understanding of technology and have been reluctant to invest in this
area in the past.
Amelia is a key sponsor for this project and feels as if she had lost the confidence of
the board with regard to the implementation of new technology. She faces one final
challenge: the CEO has identified IT as one of the areas in which Sky-High Airlines
must cut back. As one of the founders of the company in 1978, the CEO sees IT as
an unnecessary expense which is costing the business too much money and would Dr Maria Kutar Sept 2014 3
Operations and Information Management
rather focus on redundancies and other traditional efficiency techniques, rather than
investing in technology.
Your Task
You are a consultant employed by Amelia Earhart of Sky-High Airlines. Your
objective is to write a report with your analysis and recommendations regarding the
introduction of an integrated booking system, based on that of Fresh Air (the South
African airline), into Sky-High Airlines by discussing the following:
• Outlining the ways in which the new IT strategy can benefit Sky High Airlines
• Identifying key challenges of Sky High Airlines transitioning to an integrated
system
• Providing detailed recommendations for how the strategy could be effectively
implemented.
You should use appropriate theories, frameworks, models, that we have covered in
the module, to inform and justify your recommendations. You may include in
appendices any analysis that you have conducted (e.g. BPM, SWOT etc) to support
your arguments.
Please structure your assignment as a report – include:
Title Page, Contents, Introduction, Main Section, Conclusions, Recommendations,
and References