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 wouldrather 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:

1. Outlining the ways in which the new IT strategy can benefit Sky High Airlines

2. Identifying key challenges of Sky High Airlines transitioning to an integrated system

3. Providing detailed recommendations for how the strategy could be effectively implemented.