UK business class airlineSilverjetintroduced a second route to
Dubai City this week, nine months after becoming operational with
flights to New York. The airline attributes its rapid growth in
large part to its IToutsourcingstrategy.
By outsourcing hosting for the airline's website, reservation
data system,
internet booking engine, automatic call distribution, and
departure control system,
Silverjet was able to provide business services within four
months for less than £100,000.
"As an airline, our primary focus is on filling seats, not
developing computer systems and software that can be quickly and
cost-effectively sourced from outside suppliers," said George
Henderson, IT director at Silverjet.
Silverjet's approach to IT outsourcing is becoming increasingly
common among start-ups, said Claudio Da Rold, vice-president and
distinguished analyst at Gartner.
The only key function Henderson has chosen to keep in-house is
the contact centre, to keep tight control over its quality of
service.
Only Silverjet staff come into contact with customers, but they
are connected to sophisticated multichannel contact management and
call routing systems, which are hosted off-site.
Speed to market and cost were key considerations for Henderson's
IT planning to support the airline, but business continuity was
another important factor that outsourcing automatically took care
of as part of the services.
Outsourcing key IT functions, such as the website, application
development and customisation, allowed Silverjet to keep its
full-time IT department to a minimum.
"We have been able to defer upfront costs and pay only for the
work we need done. Keeping the IT function small has enabled it to
be agile and respond quickly to business needs by buying in the
necessary expertise to deliver differentiation through innovation
quickly when required," said Henderson.
Da Rold said that, after several years of scepticism about the
services model following the burst of the dotcom bubble, start-ups
are turning to this sort of "multi-sourcing" model to decrease
capital expenditure and time to market, particularly in the
Asia-Pacific region.
Gartner has also found that companies are attracted to this
model of outsourcing services from a risk management point of
view.
"Buying services on a pay-per-use basis limits risk because,
unlike traditional outsourcing, companies do no have to invest in
hardware, licences and services before moving management of the
system outside," said Da Rold.
Although this model of outsourcing is mainly associated with
start-ups, Gartner is also seeing more established companies
following the trend of using standard business and IT services
delivered to multiple clients to lower cost and improve speed to
market.
"Gartner believes this trend will increase, driven by the fact
that competing businesses continually require IT to be better,
faster and cheaper, which can not be done with the traditional
approach," said Da Rold.