WestJet: From Regional Carrier to International Airline Leader - Essay Sample

Introduction

Founded in 1996, Southwest Airlines quickly disrupted the U.S. airline industry with its low-cost planes. As one of the most admired Canadian companies, WestJet Airlines continues its successful path by offering innovative, affordable, and high-class services for its customers. The company grew from a regional carrier serving just five cities in Canada to become an international carrier company serving close to 100 destinations by 2015. In a move to improve code sharing and implement other IT applications to enhance its competitiveness, the executive team hired a competent CIO to bring the company at per with its competitors. The CIO was tasked with the responsibility to assess the company's IT competence with the aim of improving its competitive advantage through transformative guest services. According to the executive, the IT section of the company is vital to achieving the company's ambitions. Cheryl Smith was optimistic following her appointment as the CIO and Executive Vice-President. In a statement, she declared that she was honored to work with a company that planned on using IT to achieve success.

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Issues Facing WestJet

Since its introduction into the U.S. market, WestJet Airlines has had a competitive IT department. It is among the first airlines that provided its customers with electronic ticketing. However, the company's current IT systems are lagging behind in comparison to its competitors. This is the reason the company hired a new CIO to come up with a plan to align its business strategy with IT (Pearlson, Saunders and Galletta 2016). Some of the issues facing the company are outlined below.

WestJet's IT

Most of the employees in the company's IT program started off their careers at the company. They were only conversant with the WestJet IT way. Also, there was a disparity in the number of workers with skills that meet the industrial standards. Consequently, most of the procedures they followed were not up to standards.

Challenges With the IT Structure

WestJet operated on a silo-based model that had multiple groups, with each group working on a particular task such as governing, maintaining, building, and managing. This structure was problematic in that no group could claim accountability for a particular business unit, lack of competition, and transparency for the IT resources (Nolan and McFarlan 2005).

Problems With Budgeting

There were several meetings held between the IT VP and business unit VPs to negotiate and prioritize the use of resources. Nonetheless, the BU VPs did not prioritize accordingly, burdening the IT departments.

Unavailability of Backup Systems

The company's data center is inappropriately positioned, and a slight mishap could disrupt operations. Disaster recovery systems need to be implemented as soon as possible, especially for such a company that cannot afford to have a downtime.

Processes and Operations

WestJet Company lacked standards to deal with reporting service tickets, root-cause analysis, and outages.

Lack of a 24Hr IT Support

The company lacked an allocation for IT staff to work on the night shifts, with some of the team working on regular hours having to work overtime. This strategy was not only expensive but also tiresome for the IT group.

Understanding the Role of IT in Realizing WestJet's Goals

In the company's present operating system, the IT section worked like an isolated system. The section only proved heroic during IT emergencies. Although this system allowed the company to increase its market share, it would be difficult to gain a sustainable advantage in the market. WestJet needed an IT system that could support daily operations and provide a competitive advantage to enable them to lead in the market (Pearlson, Saunders and Galletta 2016). The management ought to understand that companies like WestJet need integrated business and IT strategies and that they are dependent.

Essential IT Changes at WestJet

The troublesome transition to the SABRE reservation system from the initial in-house system is a confirmation of the transforming IT department at the company. Smith was able to identify some of the issues that needed improvement and proposed respective governance models to align and transform the WestJet's IT with the business goals (Pearlson, Saunders and Galletta 2016). These changes will come in handy to improve the efficiency of the company's service delivery.

Restructuring WestJet's IT Organization

The IT section needs to be reorganized by assigning IT groups to every individual business unit. This will solve the problem of resource contention among the company's Business Units. The remaining section of IT needs to be assigned to maintain adherence to the best practices of the industry and the organization's common infrastructure (Pearlson, Saunders and Galletta 2016). This will result in a cost-effective running of the company's business operations.

IT Planning

Employee Value Proposition (EVP) of every BU needs a BU-CIO to monitor the business IT needs and ensure that it receives the appropriate resources. This removes the requirement for PMO and reduces the overheads as well.

Disaster Recovery

The company would require a redundant data center to maintain continuous operation of IT in the event of a disaster.

Changing the IT Culture

Transforming WestJet's culture from order takers to create client-centered partners would enable the company to compete favorably. It would also improve its IT standards.

Implementing an All-Round-The-Clock IT Support

A 24hr system will handle the system outages of the company and also provide better work experiences for the employees.

Consequences of Proposed Ideal IT Governance

IT Planning

Previously, the Business units competed for IT resources, overloading the IT department with recent projects. This was mainly a consequence of the failure of business units to prioritize. The new governance model would, however, ensure that the BU is appropriately connected to IT. Every business unit's budget would be able to fulfill its IT requirements. Previously, only the high priority projects would receive funding. This new model would ensure that budget allocation and planning would become less troublesome.

BU-CIO and Executive VP

It is the sole responsibility of the BU-CIO to ensure that the business units receive the necessary IT resources to help them succeed. Consequently, the BU-CIO needs to be well versed with information about the business unit and the IT department (Singh, Kulkarni, Johal and Khan 2019). The novel model of governance gives Executive VPs unlimited access to the staff operating in the IT department. The main task the executive VPs have is to recognize the existing opportunities and methods to exploit the IT resources that they have been provided with. Also, they play an important role in handling any structural changes that may result from the new alignments.

Implications of Effective Implementation of the New Governance

The model Smith proposed was welcomed with much skepticism from the IT staff. The changes would result in breakage of the long-founded personal relationships and practices. Nonetheless, Smith has a credible solution and should update her peers about the plans for the new model. She also needs to explain to them the need for the proposed changes and calm the employees' anxieties by assuring them her assistance in facing the challenges in their new roles through commitment. This can also be achieved by offering them a sense of belonging and purpose in the business.

References

Nolan, R., and McFarlan, F.W., 2005. Information technology and the board of directors. Harvard business review, 83(10).

Pearlson, K.E., Saunders, C.S., and Galletta, D.F., 2016. Managing and using information systems, binder ready version: a strategic approach. John Wiley & Sons.

Singh, M., Kulkarni, A., Johal, A. and Khan, M.A.F., ServiceNow Inc, 2019. Graphical User Interfaces for Dynamic Information Technology Performance Analytics and Recommendations. U.S. Patent Application 15/786,398.