Information System of Westjet
1. Introduction
IT governance recently has raised many companies’ concern with its advantages including balancing companies’ priorities for scale and IT standardization, leverage IT innovation in Business to support companies’ operation and strategic growth. WestJet, as one of the most competitive international airline has invested much to the improvement of technological development. However, it now faces a great challenge during the transition into codeshare that they have no idea whether they have a great IT, if not, how to improve it to bring this company to where it need to be. This assignment is going to illustrate the key strengths and challenges of WestJet, the IT management condition and some of personal suggestions to improve the IT governance.
2. Key Strengths and Challenges
There are several elements can be regarded as WestJet’s key strengths, one of which is the custom service based corporate culture. By adopting the employee share purchase plan, most employees are motivated to be dedicated into their works ‘Because Owners Cares’ (Munro & Khan 2013). In addition, better efficiency of funds brings down the cost of the company, leading to the relatively low airfare costs, which is another advantage.
When it comes to WestJet’s IT, WestJet has a significant number of excellent technical employees in IT group which format the solid foundation for all IT practices. Many IT employees in this group has been in WestJet since early and they are experienced in IT techniques and most familiar with WestJet’s IT. They work together share experience and expertise easily and frequently, so everyone are quite experienced in several fields, in which case , solving emergencies becomes much easier for WestJets.
However, there are also some challenges for WestJet to solve. For instance, inappropriate organizational structure (no direct connection between IT and Business), chaotic planning/budget process, lack of backup data center, heavy pressure on 24/7 support,
IT governance recently has raised many companies’ concern with its advantages including balancing companies’ priorities for scale and IT standardization, leverage IT innovation in Business to support companies’ operation and strategic growth. WestJet, as one of the most competitive international airline has invested much to the improvement of technological development. However, it now faces a great challenge during the transition into codeshare that they have no idea whether they have a great IT, if not, how to improve it to bring this company to where it need to be. This assignment is going to illustrate the key strengths and challenges of WestJet, the IT management condition and some of personal suggestions to improve the IT governance.
2. Key Strengths and Challenges
There are several elements can be regarded as WestJet’s key strengths, one of which is the custom service based corporate culture. By adopting the employee share purchase plan, most employees are motivated to be dedicated into their works ‘Because Owners Cares’ (Munro & Khan 2013). In addition, better efficiency of funds brings down the cost of the company, leading to the relatively low airfare costs, which is another advantage.
When it comes to WestJet’s IT, WestJet has a significant number of excellent technical employees in IT group which format the solid foundation for all IT practices. Many IT employees in this group has been in WestJet since early and they are experienced in IT techniques and most familiar with WestJet’s IT. They work together share experience and expertise easily and frequently, so everyone are quite experienced in several fields, in which case , solving emergencies becomes much easier for WestJets.
However, there are also some challenges for WestJet to solve. For instance, inappropriate organizational structure (no direct connection between IT and Business), chaotic planning/budget process, lack of backup data center, heavy pressure on 24/7 support,