WestJet Airlines in Canadian Airline Industry - Essay Example

? WestJet Airlines Introduction Westjet airlines is a Canadian carrier that provides scheduled and charter services to over 87 destinations in Canada, the Caribbean, United States, Mexico and central America. It was established in 1996 and by 2012; it was ranked the ninth largest airline in North America. It has two hubs, Calgary International Airport and Toronto Pearson International Airport. It also has two focus cities, Edmonton International Airport and Vancouver International Airport. The company’s slogan is “Owners Care”. The company’s headquarter is in Calgary, Alberta, Canada and headed by Gregg Saretsky who is the CEO/ President. Westjet also operates on vacations to provide hotel, car, air, and excursion packagings. According to a research conducted by TNS Canada, Westjet is the most preferred airline in Canada (Grescoe, 2004). The competition over the Canadian traveler is fierce and Westjet is not spared from the whole situation. Its main competitors include Air Canada and Porter Airlines most specifically Air Canada. Westgate has adopted a counteractive competition strategy to keep up with the spirit of competition. When Air Canada revealed that, it would be adding a premium economy class to cater for their customers of the business class, which was to include wider seats and a bigger legroom at a slightly higher economy price. Westjet responded by purchasing a fleet of Bombardier Q400s with seat configurations of 737-800. This included roomier premium seats and high-density economy class. Westjet signed a letter of intent for buying 20 Q400’s with another 25 on the way. Westjet has a comparative advantage as compared to its competitors because it not only offers low prices but also better services. When Westjet ventured into the market in 1996, it found that air Canada was not serving the family segment adequately (Grescoe, 2004). The said segment was not willing to pay $200 just to reduce the travel time. However, Westjet came up with a plan of $100 to ease the pinch on the family segment. Indeed Westjet succeeded in this venture and found a niche position in the airline industry developing a sufficient margin for profits. Westjet’s ethics hold that what is good for efficiency, cost can also be good for the environment, and its main aim is to accomplish that. Its mission is to enrich the lives of everyone through provision of safe, friendly, and affordable air travel. In fact, Westjet received the “Business Ethics” Award from the Better Business Bureau in Alberta in 2004. It was also ranked fourth in Reputation Institute’s Corporate Reputation study among the 50 largest companies in Canada and Most admired corporate culture as selected by Waterstone Human Capital in 2011. Westjet’s values include commitment to safety, positive and passionate in everything, appreciative of people and guests, fun, friendly and caring, aligning the interests of West Jetters with the interests of the company and honest, open and keeping to their commitments (Grescoe, 2004). However, there was a major ethical issue in May 2006 between Westjet and Air Canada where Westjet admitted to accessing confidential information from an Air Canada’s website. Air Canada claimed that Westjet unfairly adjusted its scheduling and pricing information to gain a springboard in starting new routes and terminating others. In a joint press release by Westjet and air Canada, Westjet admitted full responsibility stating that the conduct was both unethical and unacceptable. Westjet management admitted that they engaged in an extensive practice of covertly accessing a password-protected proprietary employee Web site maintained by Air Canada to download detailed and commercially sensitive information without authorization or consent from Air Canada (Grescoe, 2004). The most disquieting fact about this confrontation was that the whole affair of corporate spying occurred under the watchful eyes and direction of top management officials at WestJet and it did not stop until Air Canada blew the whistle. Clive Beddoe, the co-founder WestJet and former president admitted that the airline learned bitter lessons from the ordeal. In a quick rejoinder following the fallout from Air Canada's lawsuit, introduced a whistle-blower policy and enhanced its “code of business conduct”. ICT Westjet has grown to an international airline with more than 9000 employees by 2011. In a bid to implement code sharing and improve their competitiveness, Westjet’s management hired an experienced and successful CIO to assess its IT competence and deliver innovative services to the guests. She brings more than 30 years of experience in IT design, development, implementation, and operations to her leadership role at WestJet. WestJet builds strategic applications when required – using its own in-house skills and ideas – by following an “adaptable architecture” approach to software development. This is designed to help WestJet’s 50 system development team members quickly develop customized applications to meet the business priorities (Grescoe, 2004). Westjet recently added ERP software developed by J.D Edwards to help in better management of the supply chain and performances. The ERP ensures more strategic data and valid recommendations because of its dynamic nature. Such recommendations include inventory levels, inventory turns, supplier performances, material flow and lead time management. The ERP solution also helped ease on suppliers from between 2800 and 2900 to 2500. J.D Edwards ERP solution also assisted in evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of suppliers therefore identifying procurement professionals. Westjet has an interesting data platform. It has over twenty-five servers, oracle platinum services, and a consolidated 16 DBs that reduces data center administration needs. It also has a Siebel MRO identity notifications internet booking. The Siebel translates to the success on HP-UX and Eva storage. It ensures expert application and database tuning. It maintains a customized database statistics as well as a long running backup (Grescoe, 2004). The Siebel also helps in frequent I/O performance issues and overlap in heavy batch processing. When it comes to exadata, it ensures that there is no tuning required post migration- 1 index added. Similarly, it ensures the Default Oracle Maintenance Statistics are used and that there are no I/O performance issues. Finally, it also ensures that jobs fit in the allocated windows. The Siebel data performance is as follows: Response time: 0.01 centi-seconds Backup time: 5 h (HP) > 0.5 h (Exadata + Data Domain) Westjet has also rolled out a plan to enrich its database as follows: Siebel 8.2.2.3 by the third quarter of2013 Siebel HCC (1-2 Million/Week) by the fourth quarter of 2013 Memory Optimization by September 2013 Purchasing two additional ? Rack X3-2 by the first quarter of2014 Additional Siebel Functionality Travel Agent Commission by 2013 Call Center CTI integration and Case Management by 2014 Revenue Management by 2013 BI Analytics Initiative by 2014 Other Tier 1 database consolidations ... during 2013/2014 Active Data Guard / Golden Gate -2014 Conclusion Westjet airlines remain one of the travelers choice in the tough Canadian airline industry. This is deduced evidently by its sophisticated ICT set up and its approach towards management meeting the needs of its customers better as it takes into consideration environmental issues and the well-being of its customers (Grescoe, 2004). Its comparative advantage in the Canadian market is owed to its considerate and ethical business conduct albeit with certain controversies. Reference Grescoe, P. (2004). Flight path: How WestJet is flying high in Canada's most turbulent industry. s.l.: John Wiley & Sons Canada Ltd. Read More