British Airways is considering deploying a company-wide
ERP system to help it cope with increasingly tighter margins in the
air industry.
The system would be one of the biggest ERP-deployments in
Europe.
BA CIO Paul Coby told Computer Weekly, "We have standalone ERP
systems in our engineering and human resources departments, and we
are now considering a company-wide deployment to help maximise
efficiencies.
"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 suppliers in poll position for a the British Airways
project are 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.
British Airways 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 plaguing the industry.