BA it head: Aviation industry in the data nuggets

Aviation industry has always been a pioneer in it technology, but in recent years with the global aviation industry downturn, some airlines ' it budget is seriously inadequate, leading to a series of failures and even accidents occurred, in the last month, American Airlines it failure caused a huge business losses. In the field of IT investment and research and development, British Airways has achieved good results in recent years, so we interviewed Ba Mack Klau, the head of it, and asked him to talk about how BA is deploying and perfecting it technology to protect business development.

The UK aviation Technology strategy, which follows the mainstream change in it leadership that took place two years ago, is still vibrant, and the key point is to secure the company's economic situation through the modernization of infrastructure and smarter use of customer data to increase revenues.

Since Paul Coby, who has been in the company's CIO position for more than 12 years, has left office in 2011 after merging with the Ainu Airlines, the two highest-ranking people in the British aviation IT organization are now responsible for it architecture and delivery Mack Klau and Steve Harding for it and infrastructure, They all report to the business Service Director Philippe Osmond.

"We will never replace Paul, we just split it organization into two areas." Steve is responsible for the efficient operation of the data center, and my job is to lead a department responsible for change. , "said Crowe.

He said that under the new architecture, British Airways ' IT department had reached its best, and that the company had no plans to resume CIO positions.

"We've moved it to a more pure state," says Crowe. Paul has taken a route, where he has been trying to find the process, but I don't think the business sector will appreciate it. ”

"I think we've become an IT service provider--a single business IT department--for the company's business."

Deep behind the scenes

One of the big projects that Crowe and Harding is dealing with is to achieve integration with Iberia. As a result of the parent company's international Aviation Group (IAG), Iberia and British Airways remain separate operations, apart from the joint operations of the trucking sector.

"We've been trying to integrate British Airways with Iberia, so a lot of integration work has been underway," says Crowe. At first we did easy things, such as purchasing savings, but gradually we began to integrate the systems together. ”

One of the challenges, he says, is to start integrating IT systems when businesses are working in their respective areas. "We're looking for ways to integrate our business first--and then we can quickly raise it issues." This is a business-oriented integration. ”

However, as British Airways acquired the British Midland (BMI), a very small airline that was headquartered in Britain last year, Mr Crowe has a different story about integration.

"BMI already has a whole set of IT systems, but my business justification suggests that we should undo all BMI's it costs in a year-we completed our acquisitions in April 2012 and we have dissolved all of its IT systems by December," he said. ”

Although former BMI's IT staff are working in parallel redundancy, all business operations are either canceled or modified, and all platforms are incorporated into British Airways ' it assets.

"The key is to use the British Airways process, the IT merger was very successful and we finished in a very short time," said Crowe. ”

In the data nuggets

British Airways is also working to maximise the use of customer-purchase data to improve its services and, of course, to achieve more sales. The "Know Yourself" project revolves around this goal, locking the market and optimizing data on the passenger and customer social media information owned by British Airways.

This approach, according to Crowe, also helps British Airways ' auxiliary sales focus on how airlines can raise revenue on one flight, or sell other products, such as hotels or car rentals, or through a lift.

"Merging the data elements of customer behavior like this allows us to make better, more rational decisions about how we interact with our customers." , "he said.

"We are using large data technology to explore our own data sources, as well as other sources of information." It allows us not only to use our own data sources, but also to use the "British Airlines loyal Customer reward program" Avios data. For example, if we know that you are an honorary member of the Hilton to accumulate membership points, we can provide you with information about the Hilton Hotel instead of the Marriott Hotel. , "he added.

"We are using very personal customization capabilities to design our promotions," he said. ba.com and our commercial sales have changed a lot-we are selling more like retailers than airlines. For example, on the ba.com we are no longer simply offering a large number of flight options for different dates, we are trying to provide the shipping options at different prices on the same day so that the customer can see the fluctuating price changes. ”

British Airways has a lot of analytical power in its 1000-strong IT department, but it does not do a lot of work internally. According to Crowe, British Airways is cooperating with third parties, such as the opera solution, which uses advanced science to extract predictable patterns from the data and translate them into commercial output, which are returned to British Airways as a "service" fashion.

"We just have to get the transaction data compared to the processing." Part of the work we keep inside the enterprise, but we really look for the newsletter type output, this part we outsource out. "he said.

"This means that you can refine the data and use it. All that matters is how you make those models-you need mathematical models and data scientists, and we can't provide them all internally. And you don't have to hire these technologists full-time, so we buy this service. ”

Over the next few months, British Airways will also make important decisions about how to use internally generated data to improve efficiency. In the final analysis, there will be a lot of input in mail and collaborative office platforms. Consultations are ongoing with potential partners.

"We are a bit behind the aviation industry in using social media, collaborative tools and emails internally, and we'll catch up." "he said.

(Responsible editor: Fumingli)