Strengths of WestJet Airlines Ltd
The principal objective of this paper is to focus on a famous airline company known as WestJet Airlines Ltd. Started in 1996 this company have around 737 aircraft now travelling across 18 nations. Their services are among the best in the world with low cost tickets and vacation schemes (Taneja 2016). The existing IT department is not as productive as it is supposed to be, this report focuses on the effective strategies which will be helping this organisation to complete its business goals (Francis, Humphreys and Aicken 2017).
The foremost importance of this section of the paper is to highlight the prime strength of WestJet Airlines Ltd. The main strength of this airline corporation is its low cost structure and exclusive low cost vacation packages. It has a very strong corporate culture and due to this, they got numerous recognitions in different recognition all over Canada. Their service is one of the best among all the reputed airlines organisations. The other prime strength of this company is their effective strategic planning which resulted in their growth in business over the years in the entire North American continent. The prime determination of this section of the paper is to focus on the challenges face by the airlines company over the years. The main challenge came from the biggest and the most popular rival company Air Canada which also have a great market reputation because of their services over the years. One of the main challenges of the IT department of this airline company is to ensure the security of their clients; WestJet Airlines Ltd is one of the very few companies who have introduced electronic ticketing in the first place among all its rival companies (Lawton 2017). Their main challenge was to cope up with the other companies so they needed an up gradation of their existing modules which could have a direct positive impact on the company.
The role of Information System is discussed in this section of the paper which states that due to the enhanced and effective strategies of the other corporations WestJet Airlines Ltd was lagging back in competitions. The appointment of Cheryl Smith as a vice president and CIO of WestJet Airlines Ltd in April 2011 changed the whole scenario for the company. Her technical team studied and recommended a few suggestions to the airlines company; he understood the limitations of this company with the help of her IT experts and made a few necessary changes (Taneja 2016). She made all the functionalities of the IT department very much transparent so that they can attract more commuters (Amin, Yan and Morris 2018). She introduced a client-centric way of operations across all the departments. She reassigned the roles and responsibilities of the IT professionals according to their expertise so that the complex task can be achieved easily.She introduced enterprise resource planning systems, business analysts, project managers and business intelligence group for the purpose of solving the potential challenges faced by the corporations (Lawton 2017). New business units were created based on the background of the employees and they held a regular meeting to find out the development of the IT department in the airlines company. The main purpose of those meetings was to maintain the mission, vision, strategy and processes of the airline company in order to remain competitive in the market (Renwarin 2017).
Challenges faced by WestJet Airlines Ltd
This unit of the paper will be discussing on the impact of alignment on this airline corporation to maintain competitiveness amongst the market rivals. The six alignment maturity criteria’s are considered here are as followings:
- Communicationbetween the stakeholders of the airlines company.
- Measuringall the values related to the performance parameters, regular formal assessment and reviews for continuous growth in the airlines company
- Governance: Effective strategic business plans should be incorporated by the airline corporation in order to improve all the business partnerships of the airlines company such as the shared flight journey with the other airlines companies so that the business reach of the airlines can be maintained (Chapman 2016).
- Partnership: The airline company should be having a good partnership with all its associated business partners in order to have a long-term success story. Special reward schemes should be encouraged to all the personnel on accomplishing their business objective which will indirectly have a positive impact on the growth of the airlines company (Deng, Ji and Wang 2017).
- Scope and architecture: Flexible and transparent architecture will be attracting more investors, business partners and consumers which are the most important section of the alignment maturity of this airlines company, each project should be monitored well by the respective managers as well.
- Skills: The airline company should be adopting an effective feedback system for both commuters as well as for the other stakeholders of the organisation so they can develop strategic plans which will be user-centric and not system-centric.
The strategic alignment is done with the following steps are as followings:
- Setting goals for each stakeholder of the company according to their expertise and experience.
- Development of the strategic alignment maturity assessment for understanding the connection between the business operations with the IT department of this organisation.
- The priorities of the different partners should be analysed and work should be done on the basis of the task assigned to them by their respective managers.
- Project management is the other important feature of this strategic alignment which considers the list of deliverables, ownership, timeframes, resources, risks and measurements (Taneja 2016).
- Evaluation of the project plans is the other vital unit as it can guide the airlines company so that it can enhance their business in all aspects.
- Sustain alignment is the most difficult step for the airlines company as it helps them to maintain their business values by maintaining certain effective protocols
The WestJet Airlines Ltd should be adopting an effective and strong communication strategy between each of its stakeholders in order to evaluate their review as the prime importance of enhancing the IT department is to increase the business reach of this airline company (Roy, Dostaler and Fiset 2015). Incorporation of new technology may lead to many issues on the premises but employees should be thinking about the long-term goals of this corporation. The management teams of this airline corporation should also be looking forward to the new set of changes rather than opposing the new changes as it will be beneficial for them the most.
The new technologies should be implemented in the airline corporation in such a way so that it can be accepted wide through the organization, new changes should be brought to smaller units and review of the technology should be done. Based upon the positive and negative review that particular technology should be incorporated to all the other departments of the airline corporation, in this way with the help of smaller steps big technology should be incorporated by this airline company (Gillen 2018). Reward scheme should be encouraged by the management teams upon successful implementation of the new technology in the corporation.
Conclusion
From the above report, it can be concluded that the WestJet Airlines Ltd needs to adopt an effective communication platform so that employees and stakeholders can present their opinions about the new organisational change in the IT department. The role of information security and alignment maturity should be considered while making the changes along with that the changes should be incorporated in such a way that most of the employees get used to it and work more effectively with it.
Reference
Lawton, T.C., 2017. Cleared for take-off: structure and strategy in the low fare airline business. Routledge.
Taneja, N.K., 2016. Looking beyond the runway: airlines innovating with best practices while facing realities. Routledge.
Amin, S.H., Yan, N. and Morris, D., 2018. Analysis of Transportation Modes by Evaluating SWOT Factors and Pairwise Comparisons: A Case Study.
Lawton, T.C., 2017. Strategic management in aviation: critical essays. Routledge.
Taneja, N.K., 2016. Airline Transformational Opportunities. In Airline Industry (pp. 167-188). Routledge.
Chapman, M., 2016. Sustaining Reductions in Aircraft Emissions for Canada’s Major Airlines. In Managing in a VUCA World (pp. 175-193). Springer, Cham.
Deng, Q., Ji, S. and Wang, Y., 2017. Green IT practice disclosure: An examination of corporate sustainability reporting in IT sector. Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society, 15(2), pp.145-164.
Taneja, N.K., 2016. Relevance to the Airline Industry. In Airline Industry (pp. 65-79). Routledge.
Roy, M.J., Dostaler, I. and Fiset, J., 2015. 11 Governance and environmental performance. The Global Commercial Aviation Industry, p.344.
Francis, G., Humphreys, I. and Aicken, M., 2017. Where next for low cost airlines? A spatial and temporal comparative study. In Low Cost Carriers (pp. 113-124). Routledge.
Renwarin, J.M., 2017. THE INFLUENCE OF AVIATION INDUSTRIAL ENVIRONMENT AND MARKET ORIENTATION ON COMPETITIVE STRATEGY AND ITS EFFECTS ON AVIATION BUSINESS PERFORMANCE (STUDY ON AVIATION INDUSTRY IN INDONESIA). Journal of Internet Banking and Commerce, 22(3), pp.1-23.
Gillen, D., 2018. Impacts of liberalisation in global mature markets. In The Routledge Companion to Air Transport Management (pp. 121-135). Routledge.
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