BA is considering deploying a
company-wide ERP system to help it cope with increasingly tight
margins in the air-travel industry.
The system would be one of the biggest ERP deployments in
Europe, if the project gets off the ground.
BA CIO Paul Coby told Computer Weekly, "We have standalone ERP
systems in our engineering and human resources departments, and are
now considering a company-wide deployment to help maximise
efficiency."
He said, "Any such system will have to wash its face in terms of
justifying itself as a company-wide roll-out, but we expect to make
a decision by the end of the calendar year."
The two ERP supplier companies in pole position for a BA
company-wide roll-out would be SAP and Oracle.
BA completed a six-year project to deliver ERP in engineering
and maintenance in 2006.
The Engineering Wide System (EWS) is already the world's biggest
aircraft-maintenance SAP system.
The project involved replacing 150 legacy applications with SAP,
which now controls aircraft maintenance in 26 hangars and at 142
airports worldwide. EWS also controls engineering staffing, spares
supply and airworthiness data.
BA said the benefits of EWS included improved accuracy in
tracking maintenance requirements and quicker processes for
ordering parts.
Oracle is used to power the airline's HR function.
Coby was speaking at the annual SITA Air Transport IT Summit. At
the summit, IATA director general Giovanni Bisignani said airlines
would have to optimise their ERP systems, as part of a raft of
measures, to make sure their IT was in good enough order to ride
the oil price crisis plagueing the industry.