Strategic Analysis: Cathay Pacific's IT Strategy Evolution

This case study analyzes Cathay Pacific's IT strategy, examining its evolution over several decades in response to changing business environments and strategies. The assignment addresses the airline's IT transformations, including the shift from an inward-looking, internal office focus to a customer-centric, technology-driven organization. It investigates the adoption of cloud solutions in 2016, contrasting it with the prior rejection in 2013, and considers the competitive pressures and financial challenges that influenced this decision. The analysis draws on the "Time to Win" strategy, which was implemented to address financial losses and incorporate improvements into the business strategy of Cathay Pacific. The study explores the impact of these changes on the company's overall business growth and IT infrastructure, highlighting the importance of customer-centric capabilities and data analytics in the airline industry. The reference section provides details of the sources used for the analysis.

Running head: STRATEGIC ANALYSIS OF CATHAY PACIFIC’S IT STRATEGY
STRATEGIC ANALYSIS OF CATHAY PACIFIC’S IT STRATEGY
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note:

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Question 1: How has Cathay Pacific's IT strategies changed over the decades as its business
environment and business strategy have changed?
Answer:
Followed by a thorough analysis of the case scenario of Cathay Pacific’s case study it is
observed that the Airline Company Cathay Pacific has faced a major business downfall due to its
business strategies as well as for its leaders. Making allowance to this findings it is identified that
the nominated airline company have faced a major downfall in the year 2017 however, the
Cathay Pacific was initially one of the best airlines industries present in Hong Kong. Cathay
Pacific is almost 72 years old company that has served their best services to their customers
which has influenced their business growth in an effective way. Considering the business growth
of the company in the year 2017 they have launched one of their new business strategy entitled
with “Time to Win”. The primary reason behind the adoption of the nominated strategy is to cop
up with the loss of 2016 (Du 2017).
Followed by this identification it is also determined that in the year 2007 company has
intended to drastically change their business infrastructure into an IT infrastructure. After 2007
the company has also faced a drastic change as the manager of the company’s information
management department gets retired and the objective of the company shifted to a task oriented,
customer centric organization from an inward looking internal office (Wong 2018).
However the new manager has intended to drag advance technology and strategic
movement into the infrastructure of the company the company has faced a huge downfall. While
analyzing the business objective of the new manager Smaczny it is identified that the primary
objective behind the IT investment of Cathay Pacific is to shift from the scenario of operating to

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managing the business. Along with this the new IT strategy has initiated with the purpose to
specify rather than assuming and it has also improved the problem solving capabilities by its
technological skills. Along with this the approached strategy was mostly into customer centric
capabilities thus it is highly focused on the factors that may influence the customer satisfaction.
Due to these changes as well as due to the change in leadership Cathay has faced a huge financial
loss in the year 2016. In order to cop up with the financial loss the Time to win strategy has taken
a significant place to incorporate improvement into the business strategy of Cathay Pacific
(Graham 2018).
The company has primarily reestablished the IT strategies with the purpose to get rid of
the challenges faced in the year 2016. Initially while changing the IT alignment a huge shift has
been made with the IT staffs later it has focused on the leaders and on the management as well.
Apart from these changes the company has also invested into their digital activities by
reestablishing the IT infrastructure as well as the IT environment of the business. While
analyzing the changes made by the higher authority it is identified that the incorporation of
effective monitoring tool as well as customer handling technology has majorly impacted the
activities of the IT team of Cathay Pacific.
After completion of this strategy it can be stated that however the organization is a 72
years old company the changes made from the 2007 to 2017 has drastically impacted the
business strategy and business growth of Cathay Pacific.
Question 2: Why did it decide to migrate to the cloud in 2016 but not in 2013?
Answer:

3CATHAY PACIFIC’S IT STRATEGY
After completion of the above study it is identified that Cathay Pacific has made a drastic
change in their business strategy as well as in their operational activities from the year 2016.
While analyzing the reason behind this drastic change it is determined that one of the most
visible reason of this change is the financial downfall that is faced by the company in year 2016.
Here a question raised that why they have not shifted to the cloud based solution earlier but in
the year 2016 (King 2017). While investigation the primary reason behind this adoption it is
observed that in the high competitive market most of the top rated Airline companies has
initiated to adopt cloud based solution to their working infrastructure with the purpose to
enhance their operations. Qantas who is Australia’s one of the top airline company has
incorporated cloud solutions in the year 2013 and due to that adoption the company is facing a
high run into the airline industry as studies has mentioned that before turning into the cloud
solution the company has faced several problems. After adopting the cloud solution offered by
AWS they are now able to bring a computational framework for their business data (Raynes &
Tsui 2019)
Followed by these observations as well as following the intention to change the
operational activities and to improve the business revenue Cathay has primarily opted for cloud
based solution. Along with these identification it is also determined that with the purpose to
incorporate integrity and flexibility the Cathay has decided to appoint Salesforce.com for cloud
service. Along with this feature it is also determined that since, the company has now shifted its
business goal into a customer centric, object oriented organization the features of data analytics
and best customer service solution has influenced their decision towards incorporating the cloud
services into their business infrastructure (Baxter, Srisaeng & Wild 2018).

4CATHAY PACIFIC’S IT STRATEGY
Now. Focusing on the fact that why Cathay has incorporated the cloud based solution in
the year 2016 but not in the year 2013. While investing this aspect it is identified that initially in
the year 2013 the company has rejected to collaborate cloud based solutions into their business
infrastructure due to its cost, scalability, maturity as well as the security (Cui, Lin & Jin 2020).
However, after sometime they have observed that cloud solutions are becoming one of the
trending technology that is focusing on enhancing the services of the organizations which its
advance capabilities. Thus, following the factors of high demand and effective services of the
cloud solutions it is identified that in the year 2016 the company has decided to incorporate cloud
solution with the purpose to improve the IT solutions (Bhatia & Malhotra 2019).

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Reference:
Baxter, G., Srisaeng, P., & Wild, G. (2018). The role of freighter aircraft in a full-service network
airline air freight services: The case of Qantas Freight. MAD-Magazine of Aviation
Development, 6(4), 28-51.
Bhatia, S., & Malhotra, J. (2019, October). CFRF: Cloud Forensic Readiness Framework–A
Dependable Framework for Forensic Readiness in Cloud Computing Environment.
In International Conference on Innovative Data Communication Technologies and
Application (pp. 765-775). Springer, Cham.
Cui, Q., Lin, J. L., & Jin, Z. Y. (2020). Evaluating airline efficiency under “Carbon Neutral
Growth from 2020” strategy through a Network Interval Slack-Based
Measure. Energy, 193, 116734.
Du, J. (2017, May). How Service Brand Equity Can Be Built Up: A Case Study on the Branding
Strategy of Cathay Pacific Airway. In 2017 3rd International Conference on Humanities
and Social Science Research (ICHSSR 2017). Atlantis Press.
King, J. M. (2017). Business strategy and airline models for operating managers. In Airline
operations (pp. 31-43). Routledge.

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Raynes, C., & Tsui, K. W. H. (2019). Review of Airline-within-Airline strategy: Case studies of
the Singapore Airlines Group and Qantas Group. Case Studies on Transport Policy, 7(1),
150-165.
Wong, W. S. (2018). Transitory Identity of Hong Kong: A Reading of Cathay Pacific Airways
Television Commercials. In The Disappearance of Hong Kong in Comics, Advertising
and Graphic Design (pp. 141-161). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Graham, A. (2018). Airport economics and finance. In The Routledge Companion to Air
Transport Management (pp. 189-205). Routledge.