"There are no IT projects, just business projects IT
departments bring technological advice to the table to help a
business improve," British Airways CIO Paul Coby told a meeting of
the BCS Elite
IT directors group last month.
Coby said IT was a strategic differentiator in the airline
industry. As well as cutting costs, it improved customer service,
and it was often the anvil on which business progress could be
forged, he said.
With the rise of self-service systems, BA's IT department has
had to completely re-engineer customer systems and commercial
processes. It set targets, maintained clear governance and mandated
transformational targets, said Coby, in line with four key
objectives:
● To deliver a robust and reliable worldwide IT operation, 24x7,
at lower cost
● To deliver the systems on time
● To deliver year-on-year productivity improvements
● To simplify BA's business by the smart use of IT.
To achieve these goals, BA had to align the IT architecture with
business strategy. The IT department found "snap back" to be a key
tool for this, requiring the complexity in each stage of a business
process to be justified or removed.
This helped to turn complex, duplicate, fragmented and
error-prone systems into simplified, standardised, measured,
error-free and customer-enabled systems, said Coby.
Board-level sponsorship was vital, with early agreement to
investment plans and deliverables providing the IT team with a
mandate to achieve their targets, said Coby.
BA learned that, to achieve its long-term goals, a business has
to integrate its business propositions and processes with
technology. Coby said BA's IT department had to become almost the
"anti-IT department" by forcing itself to think about the processes
and the people first and foremost.
Ultimately, BA had to transform its IT department from a
technical support group into an enabler for change in business.
The airline's experience offers lessons for other businesses,
the Elite group was told. Through collaborative project management,
with an accountable finance manager, and with a chief executive who
understands the leverage IT can give a business, it is possible to
turn any business around, said Coby.
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