Etihad Airways: Electronic-Commerce Organization - Case Study Example

Background Organization Details I have chosen Etihad Airways – one of the leading airline companies in the world and the national airline of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), established in 2003. Etihad Airways contains sixty-six (66) aircrafts that are utilized to manage more than one thousand (1,000) international and domestic flights a week. The clients of the company belong to diverse countries of the world and are used to travel by air internationally as well as nationally. The company has a huge number of employees in different departments, which are increasing day by day; hence, the size of the company does not limit to the UAE – it has outlets all over the world. The direct competitors of Etihad Airways within the UAE include: the Emirates Airline, Fly Abu-Dhabi and Air Arabia. However, as the company operates internationally, it has international competitors as well that include but are not limited to Gulf Airways, Oman Air and Qatar Airways (Etihad Airways, 2012). Business Proposal Etihad Airways provides three types of services to its customers, including the transportation of passengers (internationally and nationally), tourism and transportation of goods (cargo). One of the main businesses of Etihad Airways is the transportation of people internationally, and there are further three classes in which a person can travel, including the Diamond First Class, Pearl Business Class and Coral Economy Class. Etihad’s cargo services include: the Etihad Crystal Cargo and Etihad logistic Express2D, whereas the tourism services are provided to the customer and are known as Etihad Holidays. Existing Technologies Currently, the company has an e-commerce enabled interactive website to provide their services to the customers. Through the website, the customers can search and view the schedule of their desired origin and destination, select the most economical fare, route and schedule, choose the seats, book and / or buy the tickets. The customers can register with the company through the website by providing their requisite personal information to avoid the lengthy process of booking or buying the tickets. Moreover, the customers can avail the cargo services online and search the current status of the cargo by providing a cargo serial number. The company also provides these services through its offices, and the customers can get the services by connecting to the Customer Service Call Centers through telecommunication – the company has a Universal Access Number (UAN) for each country. Revenue Model The company engages a huge number of customers by providing them with high quality transportation (people and goods) and tourism services (lodge and food) to earn revenue. In order to penetrate in the market, Etihad Airways provides low fares as compared to its competitors and after reaching the breakeven point, it will increase its prices of the services. The customers can get the services of Etihad Airways online and buy tickets and book luggage through their main office and branches all over the world (Rodrigues, 2010). 2. Business Process Analysis Description A business process is a set of sequenced activities or tasks that need to be completed to achieve an organizational goal or a specific service for one or more customers. A business process has certain inputs from the customers / employees, a computerized or manual processing and it returns one or more outputs (Rouse, 2005). The website of Etihad Airways has several business processes which are required to be followed to achieve the desired results. Some of the main business processes that are available online at the website of Etihad Airways include: the registration process, book / buy tickets (flights, hotels, car hire and chauffeur), cargo booking and manage bookings (status of cargo and / or flight). I have selected the “buy tickets” – one of the vital business processes of the Etihad Airways website for analyzing and describing its inputs, processing and outputs. In order to start the business process of “buy ticket(s)”, the customer has to open the website of the Etihad Airways and needs to interact with the website from the commencement activity of searching the flights till confirmation of the flight by receiving the personal identification number (PIN) code. To search for flights, the customer needs to enter various inputs that include: the origin city / country, departure date, destination city / country; if the customer has selected the round trip (two options are available: one way and return), then he / she needs to enter the return date. The customer needs to select one of the three travel classes (Coral Economy, Pearl Business and Diamond First). Moreover, the customer is required to enter the accompanying persons or the required number of tickets (adults, children and infants). Once the customer provides all the required information for searching / viewing the flight schedule, the website starts processing the input of the customer and provides the results as per the searching criteria provided by the customer. The website displays a web page containing all the flights along with their fares according to the customer’s request. The customer can select any flight to view its details including flight timings, fare break-up etc. In order to continue the process, the customer either needs to select one of the most appropriate flights keeping in view the schedule and fare, or she / he can go back to the flight search web page. After reviewing the details and selecting the flight, the customer has to provide requisite personal information along with information of the accompanying person (if any). The required information includes: the title (Mr., Mrs., Dr., Prof, etc.), first and last names, e-mail address, and phone number. The members of Etihad Airways can select the Loyalty Program and its code / number. The customers can select (several options are available and include the Hindu meal, low fat, vegetarian etc.) any priority for the meal as well as the seating choice from the available seats. After entering the essential input into the website, the customers are provided with a web page containing all the information they have selected or entered so far so that the customer can review the details before paying the fares and confirming the flight. Once the customer has reviewed the information, the customer has to enter the credit card details for the payment of the tickets. There are four types of credit cards that are accepted by Etihad Airways, including Visa Card, Master Card, JCB and American Express. The customer has to enter the credit card number of one of the above mentioned cards, the expiry date, security code of the card and card holder’s name. Once the card is authenticated and validated by the bank, the itinerary will be e-mailed to the customer. Backend Processing It is pertinent to mention that while the website processes the payment made by a customer, once the customer has entered the sensitive information the browser of the customer encrypts all the sensitive information to Etihad’s web server. The web server of Etihad Airways forwards the information of the transaction to the payment gateway (server) by using encrypted connection so that the sensitive information cannot have unauthorized access. The payment gateway forwards the information to the bank of Etihad so that payment can be processed. As the Etihad website is allowing four types of credit card (MasterCard, Visa, JCB and American Express), if the credit card is American Express then the card association has rights to approve or decline the payment after authorizing the credit card information. But if the credit card is JCB, Visa or MasterCard, the information needs to be sent to the card issuing bank (customer bank). In case of Visa/MasterCard/JCB, the customer bank validates the information and replies either as approved or denied (along with reasons of refusal) to the payment gateway processor. The payment gateway forwards the results or response of the processor to the web server of Etihad so that it can be displayed on the website and conveyed accordingly to the customer. Usually, this whole process takes three seconds. In case of a successful transaction, the customer's bank makes a settlement with Etihad’s bank in terms of money. 3. Security Customer Satisfaction I believe that the customer would not hesitate to provide / enter personal as well as financial (credit card) information on the website of Etihad Airways, as the company has a strict privacy policy and implemented secure sockets layer (SSL) verified by Visa, MasterCard SecureCode, CPI Security Auditor and Trustwave trusted commerce. The privacy policy of Etihad Airways states that the customer’s information will never be disclosed intentionally to un-trusted third parties; however, the personal information (name, address, country, email) of the customer can be used for improvement of the services of Etihad Airways, market research, and statistical purposes. Security Features In order to avoid unauthorized access of hackers, the company has implemented various security applications. The secure sockets layer (SSL) encrypts the input data in the browser and sends the encrypted data to the server for further processing. It ensures that the information is protected to some extent against unauthorized access (Onyszko, 2004). Furthermore, the service verified by Visa is utilized to avoid, detect and resolve deception by asking the customer to input an extra password while making an online transaction (Visa, n.d.). In order to validate the MasterCard (credit card), the company has implemented MasterCard SecureCode that compels the customers to enter the private code of the credit card for avoiding unauthorized access to the financial information (MasterCard, n.d.). Etihad Airways has implemented the Trustwave seal – website security: it provides the highest level of encryption and layered protection to the data against security breaches and frauds (Trustwave, n.d.). Security Threats and Solutions The protection of digital information is still an immature area. Therefore, it can be stated that there are huge numbers of threats to data and the vulnerability of data / information is becoming a hindrance and barrier. Moreover, there are diverse forms of data threats based on the data storage medium, and threats to data could be from internal and external resources of an organization. Some of the security threats to Eithad Airways include: the data interception, unauthorized access to stored data, the integrity of information, and accidental loss of data. The data interception implies that data over the Internet always travels or is routed through Internet Service Providers (ISPs); therefore, data accessing from the ISP is known to be as data interception. An example of unauthorized access to the data stored in a computer system within a company is when the employees of the company could be utilizing the data for their personal use or selling out to the third company. It is sure that if the data gathering and storing process is malfunctioning, the established data will be incorrect as well; this process is known to be as Garbage in Garbage out (GIGO). Quality and accuracy of data are too critical and fundamental for a database developed/maintained by any organization, whether the database is developed for achieving a small goal with limited scope or it is a multi-billion dollar information system. Data integrity refers to the validity and accuracy of the information; data could be incomplete, erroneous or/and outdated, which would only result in incorrect information that could harm any company. 4. Recommendations Business Process Improvement Opportunity There are certain techniques to improve the business processes of an organization, including, but not limited to, the As-Is Analysis, To-Be Model, Business Process Management, Business Process Reengineering and Business Process Improvement, which are a continuous and permanent function of an organization. It is required for Etihad Airways to implement these techniques to improve their business processes by modelling and analyzing the current business processes, suggest improvements and put into practice the improved business processes. After reviewing, describing and analyzing the “buy ticket” business process of Etihad Airways, several opportunities have been identified to improve the current business process. Potential Problems and Improved Business Process: Advantages and Disadvantages It has been found that the website of Etihad Airways shows a huge number of results while searching for flights because the flight searching criteria are not as much advanced; therefore, it can be amended in a way that the customers get the precise and accurate / desired results. Eithad Airways should ask the customers regarding their priority over the price or schedule to avoid presenting several results (flights) that make confusions. One of the main advantages of adding the customer’s priority in the search criteria is the simplicity of results; however, the disadvantage is that the customer has to add / fill an extra field which may consume more time. Furthermore, I believe that the customers should give the options of adding hotels, cars and chauffeurs in the business process of “buy tickets” so that they can add these facilities according to their requirement instead of giving these options separately. The vital advantages of adding appropriate options include: the customer even unwontedly can be informed regarding the deals / fares of these facilities which may attract the customer to add these facilities into the cart; therefore, the company can increase its revenue. One of the foremost disadvantages of adding such options into the “buy ticket” business process may irritate those customers that do not want to avail such services ever; moreover, it can increase the completion time of the business process. Return on Investment In order to accommodate the improved business process on the website, it appears that the company needs to amend the web interface design of the website without amending the database design. Therefore, Etihad Airways can reach a huge return on a small investment, but there are always risks involved as some customers can be lost due to the change in the business process. References Etihad Airways. (2012). Fast facts and figures. Retrieved from http://www.etihadairways.com/sites/Etihad/Etihad%20Images/Resources/Fast-Facts-and-Figures-July12.pdf. Rodrigues, J. W. (2010). Etihad Airways – marketing plan. Retrieved from http://www.scribd.com/doc/42673475/Etihad-Airways-Marketing-Plan. Rouse, M. (2005). Business process. Retrieved from http://searchcio.techtarget.com/definition/business-process. Onyszko, T. (2004). Secure socket layer. Retrieved from http://www.windowsecurity.com/articles/secure_socket_layer.html. Visa. (n.d.). Verified by Visa. Retrieved from https://usa.visa.com/personal/security/vbv/index.jsp. MasterCard. (n.d.). MasterCard SecureCode. Retrieved from http://www.mastercard.us/securecode.html. Trustwave. (n.d). Web site seal. Why should you display a Trustwave Seal? Retrieved from https://ssl.trustwave.com/support/siteseal.php. Read More