CIO Forum: How IT helped turn around BA

Speaking today at silicon.com's CIO Forum, Paul Coby CIO of BA, shed some light on IT's role in the transformation of the airline, the importance of working closely with the business, and what eBay, Google and Skype all have in common.

Coby joined the airline in the aftermath of 9/11 and has been instrumental in what has been one of the biggest turnarounds in the history of UK Plc.

Post-9/11, BA was "standing over the edge of the precipice", according to Coby, with analysts predicting it would be one of a handful of European airlines to go out of business.

I cannot for the life of me understand boards and CEOs that don't ensure they have an IT person on the management team... Anyone who doesn't is asking for their competitors who do so to beat them.

-- Paul Coby, CIO, BA

But it's obviously still around - and thriving. On the IT side, BA has both cut costs by as much as 40 per cent and doubled its operations.

How did they do it? "By putting technology at the centre of the business," said Coby, who admitted the airline "had lost the plot on how to use technology".

A hands-on manager, the CIO believes it's important for IT leaders to play an active role in the organisation's biggest projects.

One such project for Coby was the recent revamp of BA.com. Before the site makeover, he admits you "needed a degree in nuclear physics" to use it. But that's all changed: last week the site served a high of 750,000 passengers and, according to Coby, yesterday was BA.com's best day ever, with one booking taking place every second.

He said the BA.com project made IT feel an integral part of the business. "[IT] is frontline because at BA now four out of five bookings are done online."

The "next big thing" on Coby's agenda these days is the Terminal 5 development at London's Heathrow airport. The project will see BA transfer all of its services from the other terminals to Terminal 5 by spring 2008. It's a major undertaking for IT, with all aspects of the terminal - including customer check-in and baggage - to be handled by new state-of-the-art systems.

The Terminal 5 IT systems are set for an initial launch in January 2007, so Coby's team can perform testing for a little over a year before it goes live to the rest of the world.

The key for making T5 a success, Coby said, lies not with the networks or systems but with the business - specifically, "ensuring there is a corporate business process change that goes along with it". Because of this, he explained, "IT is working with the business on the business change".

Getting co-operation and backing from the top of the business is essential for any IT project - and for the overall health of the business, he said. "I cannot for the life of me understand boards and CEOs that don't ensure they have an IT person on the management team... Anyone who doesn't is asking for their competitors who do so to beat them."

Commenting on popular internet tools such as eBay, Google and Skype, he said: "All the really hot properties are about opening up [networks] and communications flows."

Anyone doing business online, he added, "has to be able to interact with this world. I hope BA.com will be able to exploit these new opportunities".

As for another up-and-coming technology, RFID, which some airlines are investigating as a means to track baggage, Coby said BA would not be using it in the near term because of cost and logistics difficulties. But he added there's a "strong chance" that RFID or a similar technology will take off across the industry and be used by BA in future.