Impact Of IT On Business For Data Storage And Processing – Qantas Airlines Case Study

Qantas Airlines- an Introduction

Discuss about the Impact of It on Business for Data Storage and Processing.

Information Technology has become crucial to the success of any kind/type of business across the horizon. Not only it supports decision making, operational and functional processes, humungous data storage and processing but is also a critical factor in the economic growth of the business and in maintaining and improving its client-base. The report will discuss in detail about the impact of IT in the airline’s industry. This will be done with the detailed discussion based on the company called Qantas Airlines (Belobaba et al., 2015). The airline industry is also not untouched with the revolutionary impacts of IT. In fact, it has for long been married to IT. The report will discuss in detailed about how IT is changing the business and helping airlines industry to reach more and more customers.

The company was established in the year 1920 in Queensland. The company is now known to be one of the largest airlines based company in the country. The company was originally called as Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services Limited (QANTAS). Also, the company also perceived as one of the best long distance airlines and leading brand in the country.  The company has worked very hard to make a reputation based on excellence as far as safety, operational trust, maintenance, and overall engineering are concerned along with best services. The primary business is based on transportation of consumers, and there are two businesses attached with airline named Jetstar and Qantas. The company also function various subsidiary businesses, and it consists of other kinds of airlines as well as businesses in a specialist market like catering with the name Q catering. The brand functions on various platforms like local, regional and international based services (Page, 2014). The huge portfolio of a number of subsidiary businesses goes from Qantas Freight Business to constant flyers called as Qantas Frequent Flyer.

Technology has always been a crucial factor in improving the overall performance of IT in airlines industry and also it also improves the operational efficiency. So many airlines based companies are also able to reduce the overall costs and at the same time, improve operation with the help of technology being used in engine and other IT and mobile based solutions. Also, the technology has also created a good amount of connectivity along with increased experience of people traveling to different locations. Fuel is one of the crucial components of airlines industry which adds to the cost (Chen and Hu, 2013).  The aircraft technology helps in reduce the fuel consumption by high percentage as well as the overall performance also improves.

IT in Airline Industry

Airlines industry is the first industry to feel the blow of economic impact because of many terrorist attacks all across the world especially after 9/11. The industry understood the importance of IT, and the workforce functioned around the clock to apply IT in different aspects of airlines. With various incidences of crises, airline industry further deepened IT based staff in the industry which can prepare the company for the future (Llach et al., 2013).

IT plays a major role in company’s complete outlook which is presented to consumers. It has an excellent web page showcasing all the offers that the company has for the customers. Customer development exercise is also critical value proposition since it is a hardcore service industry. It is available in almost all aspects of business operations of airlines like recognizing right routes using the right tools.  Qantas Airlines also requires right routes, tools, costs, revenues, resources, activities and different stakeholders and right channel to deliver the value proposition and also harness some crucial value from them (Dai et al., 2014).

Qantas Airlines had managed to become one of the largest IT based company and enter global market in successful manner since the year 1958 especially when it was presented in the initial round of the Air services all across the world. Globalization can only be implemented with the help of IT advancement in the company, and the website helped diverse customers to purchase tickets online (Borenstein and Rose, 2014). Not only this, almost all functions consist of IT and technology has become the core of the business in a true sense.

In the process of cutting cost which is one of the main advantages of IT, it is important to place some focus on the sharing of information and co-operation between different departments. Here, IT plays an important role. IT also helps airlines to develop systems like revenue accounting or reservation system. There are the number of airlines that already have formulated alliances in marketing (Borenstein and Rose, 2014). Some technologies are used for creating efficiency in fuel and help to decrease noise. This improves the long distance flights that any aircraft can travel within a present amount of fuel and payload along with carrying weight can calculate the overall capacity of any aircraft.

In today’s world, cybercrime has become a trend which is persistent from quite some time which needs skilled as well as technologically strong people and companies all across the business world are worried and taking actions to save the company from any harm. There is a number of research which proves that around eighty-five percent of airlines view cyber-based security as a major risk since it can impact the highly sensitive systems in flights as well as passenger information (Hussain et al., 2015).

Role of IT in Qantas Airlines

Airlines also face a lot of competition as far as routes, fares, and services are concerned. Every company is adopting IT in some or other way and trying to present their services in a unique manner and some of which have managed to lower the cost substantially and also provide services at lower rates. Also, there are major expansions by many low-cost companies to different major hub airports that can make an adverse influence on the business. At the same time, the company also faces rising competition in various markets from small to medium size business, and it goes on to major expansion because of IT advancement in a diverse field (Wensveen, 2016).

In today’s world, companies are ruled by technology since it has become the soul of the products and services. Internet of Things has become a popular trend, and the overall potential is based on transforming the way people live, or travel or function with businesses.

In the airline business, the method offers so many options to improve efficiency on the operational basis and also provide rising customization to the customers. It can be viewed as the potential to transform a different kind of business models. Also, there are a lot of opportunities that some issues in present time goes where the efforts go. Airlines like Qantas Airlines have also started working and experimenting with Internet of Things since there are some projects based on the improvement of experience of passengers as well as handling of baggage and much more (Baum, 2015).  It also consists of tracking the pets in transit, monitoring of tools and creating efficiencies of fuel. At the same time, the industry is also struggling with proper integration across different systems based on legacy and chief information managers are also facing problems in getting the overall architecture right and address security based problems.

Conclusion

Gone are the days when people used to make calls to travel agents to book tickets and still be unsure if they got it at the best price or would be given a seat of choice. The process used to take hours and days before the itinerary would be handed over to the customer. This raises the need of the amalgamation of IT and the aviation industry (Zhang et al., 2014). Airlines were amongst the pioneer industries to realize the importance and need of technological involvement to revolutionize the airline ticketing system.

With this merger, the airline ticketing system underwent a complete transformation. Today the customers can just log in to any airline website/app with a tap on their Ipad and book a ticket to any corner of the world in the matter of few minutes (Zhang et al., 2014). They can not only compare the best prices offered by various airlines but can also choose the airline they wish to travel with, the time they want to depart, the seat of their choice and any additional preferences(meals, extra luggage, etc.). Such has been the impact of IT on the airline industry.

Reference

Belobaba, P., Odoni, A. and Barnhart, C., 2015. The global airline industry. John Wiley & Sons.

Chen, P.T. and Hu, H.H.S., 2013. The mediating role of relational benefit between service quality and customer loyalty in airline industry. Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, 24(9-10), pp.1084-1095.

Dai, M., Liu, Q. and Serfes, K., 2014. Is the effect of competition on price dispersion nonmonotonic? evidence from the us airline industry. Review of Economics and Statistics, 96(1), pp.161-170.

Borenstein, S. and Rose, N.L., 2014. How airline markets work… or do they? Regulatory reform in the airline industry. In Economic Regulation and Its Reform: What Have We Learned? (pp. 63-135). University of Chicago Press.

Hussain, R., Al Nasser, A. and Hussain, Y.K., 2015. Service quality and customer satisfaction of a UAE-based airline: An empirical investigation. Journal of Air Transport Management, 42, pp.167-175.

Wensveen, J.G., 2016. Air transportation: a management perspective. Routledge.

Baum, T., 2015. Human resources in tourism: Still waiting for change?–A 2015 reprise. Tourism Management, 50, pp.204-212.

Llach, J., Marimon, F., del Mar Alonso-Almeida, M. and Bernardo, M., 2013. Determinants of online booking loyalties for the purchasing of airline tickets. Tourism Management, 35, pp.23-31.

Page, S.J., 2014. Tourism management. Routledge.

Zhang, Q., Yang, H., Wang, Q. and Zhang, A., 2014. Market power and its determinants in the Chinese airline industry. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 64, pp.1-13.