Case Analysis: Air Canada Flying High Using Information Technology Case Solution And Analysis, HBR Case Study Solution & Analysis of Harvard Case Studies

Case Analysis: Air Canada Flying High Using Information Technology Case Solution

1 Introduction

The company was a predecessor of Trans-Canada Airline (TCA), which was a subsidiary of Canadian National Railway (CNR). The company started its passenger operations in 1937, while the first flight attendant was hired in July 1938. In addition, the company became the first company to implement non-smoking policy fleet wide in 1987. Moreover, the company completely privatized and became Air Canada in 1989. Furthermore, the Canadian government relaxed some aviation rules in 1999 by removing several restrictions.

Moreover, the company provides many services, which generate a major portion of its revenue. Furthermore, the first and major service of the company is its domestic and international passenger flight, while the company has its different subsidiaries that provide vacation packages to more than 90 destinations.

Moreover, the company is following a good business model. It expanded its business across the global arena, while the company is also focusing on cost reduction in pursuit of high profit margins. Moreover, the major focus of the company is towards customer service. Therefore, it can be said that the company is customer centric.

Furthermore, the management of the company believes that the key to success or the main Critical Success Factor (CSF) in this industry is innovation. This is why the company is focusing on innovation and operational excellence, followed by several internal initiatives. Additionally, the company is competing in the international arena successfully and generating revenue across the world.

2 Problem Statement

The company’s mission was to connect Canada with the world. However, the company was facing several issues, which were leading it to internal problems as well as competitive issues. The first issue was that the company was pursuing innovation with low cost strategy, which was not allowing the company to earn above average margins.

Furthermore, the company was targeting premium passengers while providing them high quality services at a lower price. Moreover, the internal integration of the company was also becoming an issue since, the IT infrastructure of the company was not capable enough to implement integration in its departments and maintain this integration and updation of its departments.

In addition, the cost of fuel was rising day by day and the impact of this factor was negative towards the cost structure of the company since, fuel was the basic input of the aviation industry. Moreover, the IT infrastructure and the culture of the company was centralized and none of the departments were able to take any decision on their own. In this paper, the analyst will find out the reason behind these problems and try to make positive recommendations and solutions for the aforesaid problems.

3 Transformation of the IT infrastructure from1994 to 2011

The company completely transformed its IT infrastructure and internal system during 1994-2011. Moreover, several changes took place in the internal structure of the company and the company tried to reach the most effective and efficient IT solution that is able to make the internal system more efficient as well as ensuring proper integration across all departments to meet the daily need of customers and the firm itself.

Firstly, the company made a seven year contract with IBM by outsourcing its IT department to IBM. Through this initiative, the basic focus of the company was to reduce cost and to work on its core business. Moreover, IBM was responsible for the IT department of the company. However, IBM set an IT department where it set some IT experts to stay in house for support and back up, while new computers were set and new IT applications were designed to stay cost efficient............

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