My Learning from the WestJet Case Study
Case Analysis
The case study by Munro and Khan (2013) indicates that IT has played a significant role to make the WestJet a remarkable success. WestJet started its function in 1996 with three uses Boeing 737-200 aircraft in five western Canadian Cities. However, by 2011, the airline boasted its activities reaching more than 90 Boeing Next-Generation 737 aircraft, 85 destinations in 18 countries and over nine thousand employees. It became “the second-largest carrier in Canada and ninth largest in North America. It described itself as a ‘high-value, low-fare airline’ with a corporate culture focused on delivering a ‘world-class guest experience’” (p. 1). The role of IT was brilliant is success of the WestJet in the mentioned period. The case shows “IT and its systems gave WestJet a competitive advantage and played an integral part in WestJet’s growth” (p. 1). The case study indicates that aligning the IT and business strategy was a key for success in WestJet. For example, one of the WestJet strategic plan was to start the codeshare that enable two or more airlines share the same flight. Thus, it required an IT move to align the IT with the company strategy.
When Smith was hired in 2011, she found “a company wanted to use IT to help it get to the next level. WestJet’s corporate strategy was heavily dependent on the ability of IT to deliver innovative guest product and services, as well as solid operational support” (p. 2). Smith started her work with benchmarking IT and performance experts and found the company has right number of employees and budget compared to the similar industries. Also she found a mismatch in number of employees within skills sets, and half of the systems, operations and procedures were as the industry standard. Then Smith proposed a reorganization based on “internal functions of planning, building,