Communication Technologies of Qatar Airways - Case Study Example

Executive Summary This report will identify the importance of Information and Communication technologies these days, and the way Qatar Airways adopted these technologies. It will identify the e-business background and Porte’s 5 forces. Qatar Airways gives importance to supplier and buyer power and keeps the threats of substitutes, new entrants and rivals in their mind. The e-marketing strategies of the company are very extensive. The company is doing scores of efforts to boost its publicity and hype in the e-market. It is using medium of social networking sites and has signed many agreements with other websites including Bezurk.com to promote its services. The layout or web design of any website plays an important role in the success of e-business. Websites should be user-friendly, well designed, attractive, easy to navigate and search-engine friendly. Qatar Airways have considered all these features in their website. Business to business transactions helps in building new and strong relationships with other companies worldwide. They are reducing the costs and providing best services with the help of their Oracle ERP project and partnership with other airlines, hotels, travel agents and car rental services. For Qatar Airways ethical issues are very important. It is part of their ethics to take care of confidentiality and security issues of customers and to provide the information that does not hurt the emotions of their global customers. E-business Background Qatar Airways, an airline company, was established on November 22, 1993 and it formally started its operations from January 20, 1994. It is one of the most competitive and fastest growing airlines in the world. In the span of thirteen years, QA has achieved tremendous growth by serving 100 destinations worldwide (Middle East Aviation, n.d.). Due to the advancement in Information and communication technologies, companies are now using latest technologies to remain competitive (Beheshti & Sangari, 2006). Click and mortar model is employed by the Qatar Airways. According to this model company sells through internet as well as through the traditional ways of selling. Qatar airlines have commenced an extensive Oracle ERP system to link or centralize different departments. Although, it is a costly plan but it will help in increasing the efficiency in the long run. Qatar Airways is reducing its expenses by providing many online services. These include Online Booking, Online Time Table, Online Route Map, Flight Status Information, Information via SMS, Online check-in, SMS check-in, Phone check-in, Arrival services, boarding facilities and mobile services (Maps of World, n.d.). QA has the competitive advantage of providing lowest fares along with excellent services. Portes 5 Forces Supplier power The rich services along with the low rates makes Qatar airways a competitive and high power brand. The readiness of both suppliers and customers is important in the success of an e-business plan. Internet has also enhanced the supplier’s bargaining power by allowing direct contact with customers, resulting in a decrease in the distribution cost. Threat of Entry The competition among different aviation services is increasing with the passage of time. Now with the advancement of information and communication technology, many airlines are focusing on e-business. So the threat of entry of other airlines in providing e-services is very high. The main competition is basically on e-marketing strategies to attract large number of customers and to make the website user-friendly. Threat of substitutes The substitutes of e-business of Qatar airways basically include those companies who are still following traditional business strategies and different websites of intermediaries. There are different intermediaries providing the same e-services e.g. expedia.com, priceline.com, travelocity.com and so on. These travel agents have the same online system for reservation of flight and would charge lesser fare as compared to fare directly offered by company to its customers. But the customers trust the website of the company more as compared to different websites of travel agents. Buyer power The buyer power of the customer has increased immensely as he can now easily make choice by doing comparisons. Through internet, the customers can easily compare services provided and the charges of different airlines in different countries. The customer’s demand for greater services as well as the value of money has increased. Degree of Rivalry The degree of rivalry or the competition in the aviation industry has increased immensely. In this competitive environment, attracting new clientele and retaining old customers by providing excellent customer services, is not only the key competitive differentiator but also a necessity. Most of the airlines e.g. Emirates Airlines, Gulf Air and many others have started their online services to remain competitive. Internet gives the ability of global representation, distribution and switching cost to airlines. E-Marketing Analysis Qatar Airways has developed an extensive strategy for marketing of their services. The company has signed many agreements with other websites as a part of its e-marketing strategy. These websites will promote the fares of Qatar Airways on their website. These websites such as www.bezurk.com officially promotes QA’s tickets as the user is redirected from bezurk.com to the company’s official website to book flights. Bezurk.com will display the real time fares of Qatar Airways and the information about the available flights on Bezurk’s network and its partner branded websites (Wego Travel Search, 2007). Comparison of fares of Qatar Airways and different airline services is also available on sites e.g. www.expedia.com. The customers can easily check the prices of different travel packages offered by the company. This gives the customers power to shop around, to make decision and choose the best deal. Qatar Airways has increased its online advertising expense through Search Engine Optimization (SEO), banner-ads and pay per click. The number of people searching for Qatar Airways has increase immensely (See Appendix 2). Qatar Airways is using the medium of social networking sites including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube to spread the information and to promote its products and services. Online news reports and advertisements are published on these websites to increase the awareness among public. QA uses direct marketing approach by sending updates and latest offers and promotions to its customers. QA provides its customers up-to-date information about latest packages and services through emails and by sending them newsletters and keep on taking feedbacks from its privilege club members. QA try hard to retain their loyal customers. They value their permanent passengers and give them loyalty reward in the form of Qmiles program. Every time a passenger flies with them, he will earn Qmiles. These benefits are given according to the 80/20 rule in which the 20% of the loyal customers are responsible for 80% of organization’s sale. Privilege club of QA is one of the most generous loyalty programmes in the world. The members will get exclusive privileges and best services from the moment of booking the flight to the moment they reach final destination. QA has decided to provide customized services to its customers according to their needs. Customers can decide which route they would like to take to their final destination. It will help in attracting different market segments. Web Design First impression of the website design plays an important role because most of the people form an opinion about the design of the website in just 1/20th of a second. The main objective of the website is to promote the company, sell its name, attract a lot of visitors, increase the sale of the product and services and thus, it ultimately results in the higher profits for the company. A website should be well designed, good, attractive, highly usable, easy to navigate, search engine friendly and able to retain the customers permanently. The home page of Qatar Airways is very attractive and can gather attention of the customers. From the home page of QA visitor can choose from a list of available languages. The website is available in different languages including English, Francis, Arabic, Chinese and many more. This feature is really helpful in getting customers from all around the world. The colours and the graphics used in the website are very eye-catching. After selecting the language the user will be directed to the main page. The visitor can see the different forms for online booking, check-in and the status of their flights directly from the main page, without scrolling down or going to some other page. Like any good web design layout, QA makes their main services and their sales points immediately visible and not hidden in the end of the page. The website is very user friendly, as through these forms the customers can search for the available flights according to destination place, timings, dates and class. The website is very user friendly. Customers can get all the required information about the company from their website. The main page contains links for different pages having clear information about different packages, schedule of flights, visa and passport requirements, mobile services, seating plan, other special services (Qatar Airways, 2010 a) and virtual tour (Qatar Airways, 2010 b) (See Appendix 1). The link for subscribing the news letters is present under the flight booking portion. Customers can have up-to-date information through newsletters by becoming member of privilege club on their website (Myhellas, n.d.). A large picture at right side showing the latest services or destination really helps in attracting the visitors. Ad placement also plays an important role in good web design layout. Below this photograph there are two boxes showing the latest packages of flight services and hotel reservation. Navigation is also available at the home page for the FAQ portion of Qatar Airlines which includes detailed information about the different queries of the customers. All the details for contacting the QA are also given. Business to Business Like many other airlines, the group tours are an important source of generating revenue for Qatar Airways. The use of B2B over internet is increasing day by day as compared to B2C. Internet is now becoming the meeting point of bulk buyers and suppliers and helping in completing the business transactions at negligible costs. Share of B2B and B2C E-Commerce in Total Global E-Commerce (2000 and 2004) (Andam, n.d., p.10) Qatar Airways have started an extensive Oracle ERP project. This Oracle E-Business suite will enable them to access accurate information, reduce the finance and administrative overheads and improve internal efficiencies. Qatar Airways hold strong relationship with Oracle which will help QA in achieving key business objectives. The monetary module will enhance the understanding of the financial condition of the company. Through this web access, the dispersed staff of QA will be able to access the information remotely. Along with the implementation of financial and Human Resource Oracle modules, QA will implement many other modules of Oracle ERP application suite. During this comprehensive installation Macro soft, Oracle partner, will provide installation services (Wilson, 2002). QA has different partner airlines, financial partners, hotel partners, car rental partners and travel and service partners. The website of Qatar Airways promotes their partners and contains all the details of them. Customers of Qatar airways can also avail the services of their partners. Privilege club of QA has agreements with strategic financial partners which permits members to earn points from their own Loyalty Program and then convert them into Qmiles. QA also has many agreements with different partner airlines and hotels. On one hand QA is promoting different hotels by displaying their ads and banners on its website, and on the other hand the customers will earn the Qmiles while staying in the prestigious partner hotel. The leisure division of QA, Qatar Airways Holidays, also provides the tailor-made holidays from Qatar to the world, along with giving different benefits to the members of it prestigious club (Qatar Airways, 2010 g). QA implemented e-ticketing with the help of strategic partnership with Lufthansa Systems. They will provide the software for self-service check-in terminals and wide range of global communication services to QA. Qatar Airlines has interlined e-ticket agreements with 50 airlines which enable the passengers to travel without a paper ticket on connecting flights with other airlines (Online Qatar, 2007). Ethical Aspect Privacy and security issues are very important in online business. It is part of the company’s ethics to ensure the data security of their customers. Qatar Airways value their customers and their privacy. QA has taken many electronic, physical and managerial steps to make the customer’s information secure. The privacy policy applies to all information gathered on their site while utilizing their services and becoming the member of Qatar Airways Privilege Club. The company will use the costumer information according to this privacy policy. They usually ask about the customer’s name, address, contact number, email address, billing information and credit information. Qatar Airways uses encryption technology to protect sensitive data of their customers e.g. credit cards information. In this encryption technology, the information is transformed using an algorithm and it becomes unreadable to anyone except some people having knowledge about the key. QA shares the customer’s personal information with their affiliates and selected marketing partners only with the consent of customer. QA is legally bound to provide this personal information to customs and immigration officials. QA is taking many steps to aware and protect their customers from different online fraud and phishing scams (Qatar Airways, 2010 f). Qatar Airways ensure that the information displayed on the website does not hurt the feelings of their global customers. Conclusion and Recommendations Information and communication technologies have become an important part of business and consumer activities. Qatar Airways is working hard to go along with these technologies. They have adopted these technologies inside the organization in the form of ERP to improve the efficiency and productivity. Their basic aim is to provide excellent services to their customers at the lowest cost possible. The website of Qatar Airways is providing ease and comfort to customers on one hand and increasing the number of customers of the company on other hand. The company is generating large number of profits due to its e-business and is gaining trust of their clientele by taking care of the customer’s data security issues. Doors to new opportunities are widely open for Qatar Airways. It is expected that the air traffic will increase in the Asian regions and other global continents. The company has started taking many initiatives to avail such opportunities but there are many other areas which can be explored more. There are endless e-marketing strategies available. To get maximum advantage of e-marketing strategies, Qatar Airways should frequently examine the e-marketing strategies used by its competitors. Through continuous improvements in services, they will be able to get hold of their target customers and to retain the leadership position. References Andam, Z., n.d. E-commerce and e-business [Online] Available at: [Accessed 15 November 2010] Beheshti, H. & Sangari, E., 2006. The benefits of e-business adoption: an empirical study of Swedish SMEs. Service Business, pp.233-234. Cheap O Air, 2010. Qatar Airways [Online] Available at: [Accessed 12 November 2010] Maps of World, n.d. Qatar Airways [Online] Available at: [Accessed 12 November 2010] Middle East Aviation, n.d. Qatar Airways announces 100th destination [Online] Available at: [Accessed 12 November 2010] Myhellas, n.d. Qatar Airways, Air tickets, Flights, the Company [Online] Available at: [Accessed 12 November 2010] Online Qatar, 2007. Qatar Airways signs agreement with 50 Airlines for interline e-ticketing [Online] Available at: [Accessed 12 November 2010] Qatar Airways, 2010. Fact Sheet 2010 [Online] Available at: [Accessed 12 November 2010] Qatar Airways, 2010 a. Home Page [Online] Available at: [Accessed 12 November 2010] Qatar Airways, 2010 b. Worlds 5-star airline in 360° [Online] Available at: [Accessed 12 November 2010] Qatar Airways, 2010 c. Travel Planning [Online] Available at: [Accessed 12 November 2010] Qatar Airways, 2010 d. Privilege Club News [Online] Available at: [Accessed 12 November 2010] Qatar Airways, 2010 e. Qatar Airways Welcomes Guests At Film Festivals Opening Night Soiree [Online] Available at: [Accessed 12 November 2010] Qatar Airways, 2010 f. Privacy Policy [Online] Available at: [Accessed 12 November 2010] Qatar Airways, 2010 g. Partner Airlines [Online] Available at: [Accessed 12 November 2010] Vayama, n.d. Qatar Airways [Online] Available at: [Accessed 12 November 2010] Wilson, 2002. Qatar Airways commences Oracle ERP project [Online] Available at: [Accessed 12 November 2010] Wego Travel Search, 2007. Signs Marketing Agreement with Qatar Airways [Online] Available at: [Accessed 12 November 2010] Appendix 1 Web Design of Qatar Airways Appendix 2 Volume of Searches on Google for keyword “Qatar Airways” Source: Google Trends. http://www.google.com/trends?q=Qatar+Airways Read More