Westjet business strategy

RESPOND TO TWO POSTS....SEPARATE EACH POST RESPONSE...AT LEAST 250 WORDS EACH...CITE ALL REFERENCES USED

POST 1:

Hello Class,

Smith first performed benchmarking with outside IT experts for a comparative analysis “With similar sized companies in the transportation industry” (Munro, 2013, p.5). I feel that this was a great first step to gaining an unbiased industry expert analysis, in regards to the company’s wellness, structure, finance, and IT systems in place. Smith’s ultimate findings demonstrated that, “WestJet’s IT was right on target in terms of total number employees and budget compared to the industry group” (Munro, 2013, p.5). However, Smith did realize that the employees primarily knew only the WestJet IT way, which she intended on changing. This will also be a great move to “Maintaining an organization-wide infrastructure, and adherence to industry best practices” (Munro, 2013, p.5). While the other designated IT professionals, “Concentrate on specific business areas” (Munro, 2013, p.5). This was done all in relation to the biggest upsetting figure, which was WestJet’s Operation’s and Procedure’s where, “Only about half were at industry standard” (Munro, 2013, p.5). As Smith described the situation at WestJet, “The business felt as though it threw requests for systems over a wall, and sometimes what they wanted came back and sometimes it didn’t” (Munro, 2013, p.5). These findings were crucial to Smith’s next moves because they demonstrated what direction the company was heading in as a whole, and clarified to Cheryl Smith that she needed, “To increase revenue by increasing system functionality, and give the business units the confidence in IT to expand WestJet even further, both regionally and internationally” (Munro, 2013, p.7).

I feel that Smith’s assessment and critique were definitely aligned and essential in WestJet’s growth in the upcoming years because the situation at WestJet to me, seemed like a patch-job to contain and sustain the growth that the company was incurring year-over-year. This can be acceptable for a start-up company, but if WestJet wanted to continue growing and become a major player in the global market, they needed to gain better perspective in determining, “Could what had gotten WestJet to where it was, get it to where it needed to go?” I agree with Cheryl and feel that her changing of the governance model allows the IT department to, “Be more responsive to business needs and enable business units to better exploit IT capabilities” (Munro, 2013, p.7), which would not have gotten WestJet where it needed to go without a change. It was also beneficial in Smith keeping full transparency with her employees during each step of the transition. Similarly, to the words of John Abele, “The key is really balance of information, making sure that all the people in the chain understand the risk and rewards.