Air Canada Aligned Business Strategy With Information Technology

Air Canada is Canada 's largest full-service airline and the largest provider of scheduled passenger services in the Canadian market, the Canada-U.S. trans-border market and in the international market to and from Canada. In 2010, Air Canada improved its reputation as one of the world’s leading international air carriers. Significant progress was made on executing and delivering on its four key priorities and this, coupled with improving economic conditions, allowed Air Canada to record operating income of $407 million in 2010, a $677 million improvement from 2009. Air Canada’s financial strategy is to continue to improve both the level and sustainability of its

Air Canada has been in the business of air transport for an extended period of time. Due to the experience and the exposure of the carrier in the field, it has made a commendable progress through many strategies as well as customer proximity. One of the approaches taken by the airline involves the identification as well as an implementation of cost reduction initiatives in a bid to increase revenue from its operations (Air Canada, 2016). It is also attempting to connect with the existing carriers across the world to connect the current customers to the international world. This approach has been adopted to increase its competitive advantage over other existing airlines.

As CEO Saretsky observed, “I’m not sure if we have a great IT…or otherwise”, Then she understood the inability of WestJet to state with confidence about its IT operations and standards. Smith’s initial Statement was “come in and help us figure out what we have”. The outcome of this assignment should determine whether WestJet had the right technologies, the appropriate expertise, efficient processes and procedures, an effective operating structure and solid systems.

Air Canada arranges a proactive strategic procurement plan to obtain different goods and services that are vital and fundamental for company growth. These strategies are based on analysis of their historical spending and on educated forecasting of requirements and opportunities. Air Canada is able to create and improve important relationships with key strategical suppliers due to their pronounced buying volume allowing them to acquire greater leverage.

WestJet develop their IT operation early and force them get the lead in the aviation businesses. However, as the global economic and the change of people’s demand, the strategic plan of WestJet need to be change to follow the change of the world. Compare with other aviation business, the IT structure of WestJet is small and keeps running on their pervious operation before Smith join into the organization. There are some risks coming out if WestJet continue these IT operations.

The purpose of the paper is to research and understand how the changes of globalization and technology have impacted the Airline industry. This paper will also apply the industrial organization model and the resource-based model to determine how the Airline industry earn above-average returns. This paper will explain how the Airline industry’s success is through its mission and vision statements with Southwest Airlines as an example. Finally, this paper will evaluate how the importance each category of the stakeholder impacts are to the overall success of the Airline industry.

The airline business is an industry that is competitive and unique, focussing on consumer choice and the responsiveness of airlines to changes in the external business environment. For any airline, this environment can be very complex as it is ‘hard for them to fully understand and impossible for them to fully control’ (The Times, n.d. p1). Virgin Atlantic is an international airline that is based in the UK. It was started by the entrepreneur Richard Branson in 1982 and now flies to 30 destinations around the world (Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd, 2011). By looking at

WestJet is also facing a strategic problem, the longer term impact that growth is having on WestJet’s culture. WestJet’s success and competitive advantage have been a direct result

Overview Bombardier Aerospace is a division of Bombardier Inc. and the third largest global airplane manufacturer after Boeing and Airbus. Its headquarters are in Quebec, Canada, and with 33,600 employees is poised to become a major player in helping the developing world acquire aircraft. The C-Series is a family of narrow-body, twin-engine, medium range jet liners which, despite some challenges in orders, remains a committed product line. It is designed for the 100-150 seat market, which is about 20,000 aircraft globally and represents about $250 billion in revenue over the next few decades. One interesting fact about the C-Series is that it is truly global in components and supply, sourcing from manufacturers in China, Italy, The Netherlands, France, the United States, and Great Britain (Change is in the Air, 2012).

Over the years Air Canada’s business strategy has changed and has been reconstructed a number of times. Air Canada’s mission has always remained the same, “connecting Canada and world” (Air Canada, 2016), but their visions and goals, have transformed.

Westjet Airlines has achieved considerable success in the past few years, winning estimable rewards related to its service, gaining loyal customers and, of course, increasing market shares. It devotes to a “high-value, low-fare airline” which provides humanized services to customers. Another pride of Westjet is its IT, which designs all systems in-house and is operated based on the business demands.

One of the first things that Cheryl Smith did when she start to work at WestJet, was to bring two performances expects to carry out a benchmarking study with similar companies in the transportation industry. The objective of this study was to compare WestJet’s IT cost, resources and budget to the industry standards. With the results of the study, Cheryl was able to find out that the IT group of the company was technically competent and mostly were since the

Alignment of an enterprise’s goals with its IT1 and IS1 systems has been a challenge ever since IT became a business enabler. Proposing an IT alignment requires a thorough understanding of the business goals of the enterprise and the knowledge that alignment is an iterative process which requires constant measurement and honing (Chan, 2002). Enterprises often face the problem of balance of priorities between IT and Business objectives. This report deals with one such case that faced alignment and prioritization hardships resulting in an unclear approach to achieve a corporate strategy.

Boeing is a world leader in the aerospace industry. At one point they were the highest seller’s commercial aviation with no competition in sight. That all changed, and soon Boeing had to change.

The purpose of this project is explore how information systems helps organisations to make decisions at different levels to achieve set objectives and strategic advantages over competitors .The team carried out research and debate on various companies, and agreed to focus on British Airways. Through literature we found out, that BA is amongst the busiest premium international airlines worldwide, BA operates mainly from Heathrow, London city and Gatwick airports and flies over 35million people to more than 300 cities and freights an average of 700,000 tonnes of cargo each year (ref). BA’s air cargo business, in conjunction with its scheduled passenger services operate under the licence governed by the United Kingdom Civil Aviation Authority