Strategic Information Systems: A Case Study of Qantas Airlines

This case study examines the strategic information systems used by Qantas Airlines, a leading Australian airline. It analyzes the company's organizational structure, operational problems, and the most suitable system acquisition method. The study also explores the development and adoption of accounting software packages, identifies market leaders, and discusses challenges faced by users. It concludes with recommendations for improving Qantas's information systems.

STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Part 1..........................................................................................................................................4
1. The current organisational structure................................................................................4
2. Operational problems faced by the company due to organisational structure................4
3. What is the most likely system acquisition method— commercial software, custom
software, or ERP?...................................................................................................................5
4. Describes and prepare a system flowchart of the sales procedures for the chosen
organisation............................................................................................................................5
5. Identify any control problems in the system and what sorts of fraud are possible in this
system?...................................................................................................................................6
PART 2.......................................................................................................................................7
1. Development and adoption of the accounting software packages..................................7
2. The current market size...................................................................................................7
3. Identify the leaders in the market and what gives them the competitive advantage.......8
4. Identify the current gaps or challenges encountered by users or customers of
accounting software/packages and make relevant suggestions or recommendations............9
Conclusion................................................................................................................................10
References................................................................................................................................11

Introduction
The Qantas Airlines in Australia is among the most attained airlines in the country. The
company started their operational activities in 1920. It started its functions as a domestic
passenger airline and extended its international services in 1935. The concerned organisation
has positively retained its brand image as is still named as the one of the favourite airlines for
the passengers in Australia.
This study will highlight the accounting system which is utilised by the organisation
for managing its financial and accounting transactions for its national and international
businesses. It will state the current organisational structure of the company and operational
issues faced by organisation due to its structure. It will highlight the most likely acquisition
method and will prepare a system flowchart for the sales procedures. It will also state the
current market size of the organisation. In addition to this, the study will also describe the
development and adoption of the accounting software packages.

Part 1
1. The current organisational structure
For acknowledging the organisational structure of Qantas Airline, it is important to first
comprehend the business operating products and services. In order to understand the
organisational structure of Qantas Airline, it is important to first understand the services
executed by the organisation (Khaneja, 2015). Qantas airlines provide range of fleet services
which carries cargo and couriers from one destination to another. It also provides
maintenance and handling services to small and regional airlines group, who could not
manage services on their own.
The organisational structure of Qantas Airlines is very decentralised and complicated.
Most of the decision making process in the company is executed by the senior managers or
the top executives of respective departments. In the organisation, top management is
responsible for the strategic and crucial decision for the airline. Though, the organisational
structure of concerned airline is decentralised, top management or the managers of the
respective departments have the right to take decisions based on the situation (Khaneja,
2015). In addition to this, Qantas Airline maintains a clear and transparent delegation of
authorities and responsibilities. For its subsidiaries, the organisation follows functional
organisational structure. Having two different organisational structures creates a very
complicated situation in the company and this leads to delay in the decision-making process
of the company.
2. Operational problems faced by the company due to organisational structure
The Qantas Airline has executed very different operational activities for ensuring that they
are able to meet their organisational activities with minimum error and maximum accuracy.
Due to its organisational structure, the organisation has to face several operational problems.
The main problem which is created due to its complicated organisational structure is that the
decision making process of the company gets delayed. The airline industry in the current
business situation has become very complicated and thus need a very dynamic and accurate
strategic decision-making process. As for example, delay in the decision making process of
the company could lead to delay in the adaptation of new technology which would be very
devastating for the company benefit. The complicated organisational structure of the
company brings miscommunication among the ground level employees and management of

the organisation. Having miscommunication at the workplace would lead to delay in
providing products and services to clients and customers. As for instance, if the reservation
executives of the company could not get proper information about the airplane seat bookings,
there is a high chance that customers gets dissatisfied with it and shifts towards its
competitors.
3. What is the most likely system acquisition method— commercial software,
custom software, or ERP?
ERP or Enterprise Resource Planning is very important when organisation has several
business activities. This system is able to streamline all the business operations and also
provides in-time information to all the associated and relevant departments. It helps in
avoiding any kind of situation and in-efficiency in the performance of the organisation. This
system is very helpful and most suited system as it assists the organisation to maintain clear
database storage. It also helps other operational related departments in order to coordinate
among themselves as per the requirements of the customer services, maintenance services
and raw materials. It has the efficiency to support the organisation to perform as per the
customer expectations and behaviours. It would also assist to reduce the errors as it transports
the information to the respective department in timely manner and with minimum errors.
4. Describes and prepare a system flowchart of the sales procedures for the chosen
organisation
The system flowchart of the Qantas Airlines starts with the development of the product and
target audience. In case of passenger airlines, the customers of the company are those who
are willing to utilise the services of the company (Stairet al., 2011). For this, the service
would start with the inquiry of the customer about the required service and their preferred
destination. Customers would then ask about the cost of the services and complimentary
services associated with it. The sales executive of the company would then provide
information for the customer enquiry. They try to convince the customers about the services
by providing possible offers and discounts. If they are convinced with the offer from the sales
representative, they will purchase the service for their specific destination. Qantas Airlines
also offers modern booking services such as booking the flights from internet or third party
vendor (Vom Brocke and Rosemann, 2010). It is important to mention here that the freight
and fleet sales procedures are completely different from the regular passenger flowchart.

5. Identify any control problems in the system and what sorts of fraud are possible
in this system?
Several problems could occur as per the control system of the Qantas Airlines. Under the
current system of the concerned organisation, the sales executive of the company could offer
fake promises to the customers regarding the complimentary services. It would happen for
convincing the customers regarding the purchasing of the flight. Providing fake information
would surely damage the reputation and image of the company. The online booking facility
provided by the organisation could also come to fraud if the proper security is not provided to
the website. If proper online security is not provided to the customers, hackers could hack
their transaction details and could interrupt the transactions (Lignier and Evans, 2012). The
other possibility of fraud could be done by the third part vendor for increasing their sales
revenue. They could charge more than the desired amount from the travellers, mainly from
the passengers who are in urgency (Lignier and Evans, 2012). Another problem which could
arise from the current system of Qantas Airline is that the cashier at the counter could steal
the cash. The sales executive at the reception could steal a portion from the cash collected in
a particular day. They could steal the cash and could create false representation of data. It is
important that proper security system is implemented in all the operations of the company so
that no problem could arise for customers.

PART 2
1. Development and adoption of the accounting software packages
The accounting software package is liable to record the data accurately as all the details of the
transaction are processed in a systematic way. It is important that the software is user-friendly
for workers in order to avoid any mistakes and it must also reduce the time taken from the
employees. It is important that accounting system could minimise the steps of recording the
data. The system must be able to store maximum information at any given point of time
(Edmonds et al., 2016). The accounting software package must be able to provide necessary
information to any department without wastage of any time. The retraction procedure of
extracting the information need to be very secure and quick
There are several accounting software package available in the market but all of them
could not meet the requirements of the Qantas Airlines due to its complicated procedure. The
company requires an ERP system which could support all the technological needs of the
company and could minimise the errors. The system needs to be prepared in such a way that
minimum errors get recorded in the accounting and cash flow of the airline (Hyvönen et al.,
2006). Due to its complicated structure and procedure, the company could not afford to
implement different ERP systems to meet their technological needs. Another reason the
concerned organisation could not implement different accounting systems as all the systems
need to be compatible with each other.
2. The current market size
Due to globalisation and advancement in technology and information system, all small,
medium and large scale industries are trying to implement accounting software packages for
their business operations. The current accounting software players which are prevailing in the
markets of Australia are Reckon One, Xero, QuickBooks and MYOB. These are competing
against each other to grab more and more market share. In the current business scenario in
Australia, MYOB is ruling the market of Australia with over 35% of share (Seethamraju,
2012). Multinational companies of Australia cannot depend on the small accounting software
packages and thus prefer large organisations such as organisations like SAP, IFS and Oracle.
These software providing companies are known for their software packages. They are known
for providing best accounting solutions.

MYOB which is one of the leading software packages in Australia and is holding a
large market share in the country. MYOB is currently listed in the ASX and is getting stiff
competition from its rivals. Around 40% of the MYOB shares are selling the initial public
offering (IPO) at 3.65%. The product of the MYOB is utilised by more than 100000 business
enterprises in Australia and New Zealand. According to ASX listing of 2015, MYOB’s was
considered as the largest technology organisation to get listed in ASX. Most of the customers
of its service are loyal towards it. The MYOB is accountable for holding more than 67% of
back office software market in Australia.
3. Identify the leaders in the market and what gives them the competitive
advantage
The current leaders in the accounting software systems and ERP are the SAP business and
Oracle. The small and medium scale organisations are ruled by QuickBooks and MYOB. The
Oracle provides Netsuite software package and SAP S/4HANA are currently the most
popular software in demand from the Australian organisations. As the Qantas Airline has a
very complex organisational structure, it requires a software package which is user-friendly.
NetSuite is popular due to its flexible nature. Under this, all the employees could alter
the fields in the software with correct access and authority. The software package is scalable
and provides opportunity to make the addition to the modules.
Another accounting software market leader MYOB has recorded dual digit revenue
development. It is the leader in cloud accounting for SMEs (Hall, 2012). In addition to this,
the fast development of cloud solutions made the organisation in a leading position.
The method of cloud based accounting is paving the technique for enhanced
efficiency in the association. As a replacement for high preservation of IT infrastructure and
purchasing expensive, associations enter in their accounting software with internet for a
periodical charge. This allows the associations to assign it concentrate and annoys on their
financial and operational resources on their core business. 12% of undersized companies in
Australia have prepared to increase the cloud computing software. All those associations
have a straight advantage on those motionless mudding by large quantity of paperwork. It
provide the ability to work on governmental content from everywhere by utilizing any
equipment. Cloud procedure provide a serious spirited benefits, the authority provides the
independence to work at anywhere and at every time with the co-workers, suppliers and

customers. All these advantages offer as a spirited benefits to the associations that take
advantage of MYOB accounting software.
4. Identify the current gaps or challenges encountered by users or customers of
accounting software/packages and make relevant suggestions or
recommendations.
There are several issues associated with the customer booking which happens in three
different locations. The booking could be done at the airport, through third party vendor and
through the internet (Gelinas et al., 2011). This creates mis-coordination among the workers
and the service provider. Qantas Airline is getting complaints regarding its payment portal
and there has been rise in the complaints about overbooking of the airplanes.
A major distress for cloud accounting system similar to MYOB is security of
information, with 46% of analysis of software Advice’s respondents declaring that safety is
the main concern. Due to this reason hackers can easily hack the online contents, scheme, an
additional hazard, and many others. MYOB is mainly focus on its design and security system
and it also invest a lot in affecting best experiences of company. The security system cannot
afford this stage of security, approval process, and concerning safe client entrance controls.
Moreover, MYOB is not novice-friendly. Associations’ workers have to be made the
software to avoid progressing of workers with unsuccessful manual procedures. Various
associations are not capable to take advantage from cloud computing as they get utilized to
the restrictions of the previous answers. So, it is serious to organize training for workers.
MYOB offers complimentary webinars for the significant customers. Every issue are
examined in MYOB accounting software which decreases it trade in the open market of
Australia and New Zealand.
Relevant suggestions
The accounting software of an organisation must be able to provide services to the company
in a user-friendly way. As Qantas Airlines in one of the busiest and biggest airline in the
country, it requires a very flexible software package system such as NetSuite. This concerned
accounting software package would be able to fulfil the requirements of the company and
would help it in streamlining its business operations through one single accounting system.
The requirement of Qantas Airline is very complicated and thus small-scale accounting
software such as MYOB could not satisfy the requirement of the company.

Conclusion
It has been found in the study that the organisational structure of Qantas Airlines is very
decentralised and complicated. Most of the decision making process in the company is
executed by the senior managers or the top executives of respective departments. In the
organisation, top management is responsible for the strategic and crucial decision for the
airline. It identified that NetSuite is popular due to its flexible nature. Under this, all the
employees could alter the fields in the software with correct access and authority. The
software package is scalable and provides opportunity to make the addition to the modules.
The study concluded that Qantas Airlines requires a very flexible software package system
such as NetSuite. This accounting software package would be able to fulfil the requirements
of the company and would help it in streamlining its business operations through one single
accounting system.

References
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learning.
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