FlyingFox Case Study

FlyingFox Case Study

FlyingFox

Note. All organizations and individuals mentioned in this case study are fictitious, and no reference to any true organization or individual is intended or implied

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Description

FlyingFox Airlines was founded in 1990 after the merger of two companies; Foxways (originally based near Birmingham) and HighlandHighways (originally based in Aberdeen). Both companies had been trading successfully for about 10 years before the merger, but it was the vision and drive of Frederick Fox (Foxways' managing director) that led to the merger.

Foxways primarily served passengers (80% passenger revenue; 20% freight), while HighlandHighways was predominantly (75%) freight, routes and planes were configured accordingly, and the annual turnover of both companies was approaching £100 million. The total turnover of the organization is now approaching £500 million.

The main workplaces are at Birmingham International Airport and Aberdeen Airport, as well as 35 other locations (airports) throughout the UK and continental Europe.

In conjunction with other airlines, it is vital to offer the right mix of flight services and ensure efficient use of aircraft. "The 'art' of pricing early and later (in time) seat prices is something special that currently depends on in-house experts, but could benefit from machine learning or artificial intelligence.

The company is headquartered in Birmingham, not far from the airport. However, the location area is currently very limited, and options for a new headquarters are being considered in several potential locations.

FlyingFox's board of directors includes a chairman (Fredrick Fox) and CEO (Stuart McKenzie, who has left HighlandHighways), as well as directors from each of its two major divisions: Passenger and Freight, as well as directors of Finance (CFO) and Corporate Services.

Currently, the CIO is not on the board of directors, but reports to the CFO.

The company's mission is sustainable development and achieving a balance between socio-economic and natural-environmental development.

The company employs 3,138 people.

1. Strategy

In recent years, the company has gradually grown in both passenger and freight operations, as well as in the routes it flies. The board has announced its intentions to continue its steady expansion but has also expressed a willingness to grow through acquisitions of other companies if the right opportunities arise in similar or additional areas. Discussions are underway about acquiring other, smaller airlines in both the U.K. and continental Europe in case this becomes profitable.

There is also the intention to develop and increase revenues from the business that Go-Shops runs by expanding the space to allow it to sell a wider range of goods. Turnover growth of 40% is planned for the next two years.

In the U.K., passenger and freight are largely planned and sold separately, and both have some specific IT services, although ultimately the core IT network and servers (and indeed many aircraft) serve both.

For historical reasons, there are two business support centers (Passenger and Freight) and three IT service desks (Passenger; Freight; Corporate). The business strategy is to integrate at least some of them appropriately as quickly as possible.

There are plans to improve the passenger experience, including a loyalty scheme (FoxPoints) and Door2Door (connecting with cab companies).

FlyingFox is also looking to use technology for all its business processes and plans to use Web services to contact customers directly.

1. IT infrastructure

There is some integration between all of the operational sites for the actual management of flights. There is a dedicated link between the head office and the two main operational centers at UK airports.

In the UK, corporate IT services are provided by several load-balanced server farms and a number of standalone servers. The data center is located at the headquarters in Birmingham.

Each of the airports has staffed and self-service Passenger facilities (tickets, baggage, boarding) as well as staffed facilities supporting Cargo (booking, pickup, handling and delivery). Each airport location has separate physical servers and connections to major operations centers, but consideration is being given to cloud-based provisioning that will facilitate setup and maintenance at new airports, as well as help with capacity management and service continuity.

1. IT personnel

The IT department is quite large (138 people) but fairly spread out: 2 in each of the (35) airports providing first level support, 15 in both main operations centers (30) providing second level support, and 38 in the Head Office providing third level support, all central systems support plus development.

Many of the IT services used are third-party packages, but a small team in the development group often creates new applications and also works with Lemonade, a cloud service provider. They are considering acquiring cloud solutions to accommodate the various server infrastructures now located in airports, as well as hosting the new Door2Door application. A second development team is working with Shuriken Software Services to develop and implement FoxPoints, a new customer loyalty service.

All server support for (37) work locations is provided by Silver Servers Ltd; devices (desktops, laptops and various scanning devices) from NotJustDevizes Ltd (based in Wiltshire). Other support (for networks) is provided by a set of different companies depending on the nationality of the location.

The IT staff is organized as shown in the attached structural diagram in the appendix.

1. IT Service management

IT service management is fairly well developed, especially in the areas of help desk, service request management, incident management, and some problem management, although most tier one support is distributed across all locations. In the U.K., tier two support is provided through the main on-site technical support teams (Birmingham and Aberdeen airports), depending on the nature of the fault. In-depth support is either head office for internally developed systems or various vendor organizations for others.