Holmes Institute T2 2019 HC1041 Report: IT Impact on British Airways

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This report examines the crucial role of Information Technology (IT) in modern business, using British Airways (BA) as a case study. It delves into the necessity of IT for BA's operational processes, highlighting the advantages IT offers, such as improved efficiency and customer service, while also addressing the associated risks, particularly data breaches and cybersecurity threats. The report analyzes how BA utilizes IT across various functions, from sales and marketing to employee management and aviation control, and evaluates the benefits of IT in terms of cost reduction, automation, and data management. It further explores the risks posed by IT, including financial and reputational damage from cyberattacks, and proposes recommendations for maintaining and monitoring IT systems, such as implementing IT governance frameworks, enhancing cybersecurity measures, and developing robust security management programs. The conclusion emphasizes the importance of prioritizing IT security and governance to mitigate risks and ensure the continued success of BA in the competitive airline industry.
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Role of IT in business
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Role of IT in business 1
Table of Contents
Introduction..................................................................................................................................2
Need for IT in BA.........................................................................................................................2
Why IT is important for business survival?..............................................................................3
What is required to apply IT into BA?......................................................................................3
How does BA use IT?..............................................................................................................3
What benefits and advantages does IT bring to BA?..............................................................4
What type of risks does IT bring to BA?..................................................................................4
How can BA maintain and monitor IT?....................................................................................4
Recommendations......................................................................................................................5
Conclusion...................................................................................................................................5
References..................................................................................................................................7
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Role of IT in business 2
Introduction
Digital stories are part of a business in the present era (Bharadwaj, et al., 2013). The airline
industry has managed its various business functions using Information Technology (IT) and
other systems. In addition, there are many other benefits of IT to improve the business
functions of the company. British Airways (BA) is a well-known organization in the UK, which
provides various services for transportation to their customers. In addition, IT provides many
benefits to the company in its business functions.
This report will explain about the need for IT in the BA. IT provides help in the management of
various processes of the BA. This report will discuss about the different risks of IT in the
airline industry. It will provide maintenance and monitoring processes of IT in the BA.
Need for IT in BA
BA needs IT services to manage their business processes as well as other technical things in
a proper manner. IT provides well-defined services to the organization. It maintains a large
amount of data on the business functions of the company. In addition, there is lot of issues of
data breaches in the industry because of IT services (Hron, 2018). In addition, British Airways
provides good services to its customers in their traveling and other transportations (Leskin,
2018). There are some technical issues have faced by the company because of IT. In
addition, IT services have some vulnerability because of various reasons, such as lack of
knowledge, poor security, and many others (Katz, 2019).
BA has faced data breach in the year 2018. It was a huge incident in front of the company.
There is an issue in their website and mobile app because of a malicious code, which was
applied by the hackers. The company has disclosed in the public on September 7, 2018, as
they have faced data breach and lost more than 380 000 user’s data. The company has
maintained its reprobation in the international market based on its valuable services. Besides,
the data breach has happened because of poor security of website and mobile app.
Therefore, large volume of data has breached by the hacker (Scroxton, 2018).
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Role of IT in business 3
Source: (Katz, 2019)
Why IT is important for business survival?
There are various reasons behind the use of IT services, as they improve the performance of
many business functions as well as it provides high accuracy. In addition, there are some
important benefits of the IT, which provides profit to the company. In the airline industry,
information technology provides competitive advantages for the company (White, 2019).
In addition, BA has implemented advance services on its premises to impress the customers.
It will increase their sales and accounts. Most of the customers have selected secure and
reliable airline industry in the UK (van Grembergen & de Haes, 2009).
What is required to apply IT into BA?
BA requires IT for managing its various services, such as sales, marketing, finance, accounts,
and inventory. It is a basic function of airline industry. In the present, most of the customers
have used smartphones for their personal usages. Therefore, it is necessary to provide mobile
app for acquiring various services. In addition, the company provides mobile apps to its
customers for booking airline tickets (Shmueli, et al., 2017).
Moreover, the company manages all the data of their customers in their databases. In
addition, the BA has used IT services for planning for the next years. IT strategies have used
for management of various functions of their business. IT alignment is helpful in the industry.
However, there are some disadvantages of IT services that make huge impact on their
reputation in the market (Senft & Gallegos, 2010).
The airline industry has various advance tools for aviation control, which requires IT services
to management of them. In addition, IT services provide help into the training of aviation
systems. There are many types of tools and software for understanding about the controlling
and management of aircraft (Sen, 2014).
How does BA use IT?
British Airways has used IT-services in most of the business functions. It provides various
benefits to the company. There are many positive impacts of IT on the customers and the
company. There are many business functions in the airline industry, which requires the help of
IT services, such as sales, manufacturing, accounts, inventory, CRM, HRM, and many others
(Salesforce, 2018).
The company can use IT-services for the management of employees. It can provide roster
systems for employees, as the airline industry has different shifts. IT-services can be used in
the training program of employees. In addition, IT services make huge impacts on the
customers and suppliers (Reynolds, 2018).
What benefits and advantages does IT bring to BA?
IT-services can easily manage all the business functions with high accuracy, which makes a
huge impact on the revenue of the company. It can increase the performance of the
employees that will increase the profit of the company. Moreover, cloud-based services
provide more flexibility in various services. IT management can use for the cost reduction from
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Role of IT in business 4
the various business functions, such as manufacturing, marketing, sales, and more
(Eisenberg, 2010).
All those services are directly affecting the revenue of the company. In addition, IT helps in
cost reduction using lean six sigma techniques as well (De Haes & Van Grembergen, 2015).
Generation enables us to automate numerous methods, which thereby will increase our
productivity. That is viable as it allows us to apply fewer resources, thereby allowing us to
improve on great at a low cost and to improve the speed with which we will supply to clients.
In the manner, it has come to be viable to serve even extra customers.
Generation additionally makes it smooth to keep greater information even as maintaining the
integrity of those records. We are better able to store touchy and private facts in a way that
makes it less susceptible to an information breach. The information may be retrieved right
away whilst wanted, and it could be analyzed no longer only to study beyond trends however
to forecast the destiny. In flip, this will assist with the choice-making procedure.
What type of risks does IT bring to BA?
There are various types of risks in the company because of IT-services. There are some risks,
which makes a huge impact on the reputation of the company, which areas:
1. Financial risk: data breach makes a huge impact on the financial conditions of the
company. The company should pay to the customers, as they lost their data,
information, and money in the data breach because of the company.
2. Reputational risk: data breach makes a huge impact on the reputation of the company,
which makes a huge impact on the economic conditions of the company.
3. Cyber-attacks: a huge risk of cyber-attacks comes with the IT-services.
Moreover, customers require security and privacy in their processes and data. The company
takes personal details and bank details for the various services. Therefore, it is necessary to
provide various services (Zhang, et al., 2010).
How can BA maintain and monitor IT?
In addition, British airways use the website and mobile application to connect with their
customers. IT services connect the customers from the company and they can take various
services using the mobile application and website (Scroxton, 2018).
BA can use IT-services for business analytics, which helps in decision-making and other
processes. AI and big data provide help to data analytics and reporting (Chen, et al., 2012).
Artificial Intelligence provides various features for the airline industry to manage their work in a
proper manner ( Ransbotham, et al., 2017).
The company can manage all the business processes using IT governance frameworks, such
as ISO/IEC 27001, COBIT, ITIL, and many others (Brook, 2018). The company can audit all
the processes using IT governance framework to analyze risks and vulnerabilities (Cecil,
2017).
It is necessary to avoid cyber-attacks from the business processes of the company, as it
makes huge impacts on the economic conditions of the company as well (White, 2019). In
addition, BA can manage all the business processes using server monitoring tools, and
techniques (Zeng, et al., 2012).
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Role of IT in business 5
Source: (irishexaminer.com, 2018)
The company has losses its shares and it has changed the market scenario, as shown in the
above figure. Data breach makes huge impacts on the financial conditions of the company. It
will take time to improve the losses. There are some risks to the IT-services. However, there
are various benefits of IT services in the airline industry. Therefore, IT services should adopt
by the company for improvement of their financial condition.
Furthermore, there are many benefits of cybersecurity to the BA, which secures all the
processes in a better way. In addition, there are some challenges have faced by the company
in its security systems. Therefore, it has required implementing a new security system, which
provides high level of security to the website and mobile applications. BA must involve
ISO/IEC 27001 standard to analyze their security systems and other threats and
vulnerabilities, which are the reason for data breaches. However, hacker can use another
method for hacking the system. Therefore, the company must improve its security systems
with new policies and security management programs. It will provide high level of security to
the company.
Millennial have come of age and they may be now the force using the contemporary financial
system. quite quickly, over half the yank personnel will include millennial and quite soon they
may also be getting into their peak affluence, where they may have a whole lot of cash to
spend and very few economic responsibilities, deliver them quite a few disposable earnings.
They extra in variety than the child boomers and are a lot greater liberal with their wallets.
They are also all about on the spot gratification. They have additionally been raised with the
net. They connected, tech-savvy, and equipped to spend. Companies need to adapt to this
new purchaser base if they are going to thrive.
Recommendations
The BA must follow this deadline to improve its security and privacy of the data and other
business processes. These are some recommendations for the BA, which areas:
Implement an IT governance framework to analyze risks of IT-services.
Use proper security tools to secure all the business processes, such as IDS/IPS
systems and firewalls
Secure the website and mobile app using cybersecurity
Implement security policies to improve the security and privacy of the systems
Develop cybersecurity teams for identification of suspicious activities in the network
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Role of IT in business 6
Establish new security management programs to secure all the information systems
and various business functions.
Create new rules and regulations for various internal and external stakeholders
The company must adopt all these recommendations for the success of the company. The
company can take the help of various emerging technologies for improvement of
cybersecurity. It will provide many benefits in the future.
Conclusion
It has concluded that BA should improve their security of IT-services to avoid data breaches.
This report has described about the role of IT in the airline industry. However, there are some
risks for the company because of IT-services. Cybersecurity is necessary for the organization
to secure all the things from cybercrimes and cyber-attacks. In addition, this report has
provided recommendations to secure all the things.
This report has provided some risks to the company because of IT and it has explained about
the solution to those risks as well. The company must adopt IT governance framework for the
improvement of IT services in their organization. Moreover, the BA must improve the
cybersecurity and implement rules and regulations to improve the process of whole systems.
Finally, the company must follow the recommendations to secure their business processes
and data of the customers. It will improve the reputation of the company in the national and
international markets.
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References
Ransbotham, S., Kiron, D., Gerbert, P. & Reeves, M., 2017. Reshaping Business With
Artificial Intelligence. [Online]
Available at: https://sloanreview.mit.edu/projects/reshaping-business-with-artificial-
intelligence/
Bharadwaj, A., El Sawy, O., Pavlou, P. & Venkatraman, . N., 2013. Digital business strategy:
toward a next generation of insights. Managemengt information system:mis quarterly, 37(2),
pp. 471-662.
Brook, C., 2018. What is COBIT?. [Online]
Available at: https://digitalguardian.com/blog/what-cobit
[Accessed 28 May 2019].
Cecil, 2017. Practicing proper governance with Cobit 5. [Online]
Available at: https://medium.com/@cecildt/practicing-proper-governance-with-cobit-5-
19c25bc2ed15
[Accessed 27 May 2019].
Chen, H., Chiang, R. H. & Storey, V. C., 2012. Business intelligence and analytics: from big
data to big impact. MIS quarterly, pp. 1165-1188.
De Haes, S. & Van Grembergen, W., 2015. Enterprise Governance of Information technology.
1st ed. New York: Springer, Cham.
Eisenberg, M. B., 2010. Information literacy: Essential skills for the information age. DESIDOC
journal of library & information technology, 28(2), pp. 39-47.
Hron, M., 2018. Top 10 Biggest Data Breaches in 2018. [Online]
Available at: https://blog.avast.com/biggest-data-breaches
irishexaminer.com, 2018. Anger as British Airways customers cancel credit cards after
380,000 payments hit in data breach. [Online]
Available at: https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/world/anger-as-british-airways-
customers-cancel-credit-cards-after-380000-payments-hit-in-data-breach-867413.html
Katz, E., 2019. Data Breaches 2018: The 20 Biggest Breaches of the Year. [Online]
Available at: https://blog.dashlane.com/data-breaches-2018/
Leskin, P., 2018. The 21 biggest data breaches of 2018. [Online]
Available at: https://www.businessinsider.in/The-21-biggest-data-breaches-of-2018/
articleshow/67045497.cms
Reynolds, G., 2018. Ethics in Information Technology. 6th ed. Boston: Cengage Learning.
Salesforce, 2018. The New Information Technology: The Changing Role of IT in Business.
[Online]
Available at: https://www.salesforce.com/research/changing-role-of-business-it/
[Accessed 14 September 2018].
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Role of IT in business 8
Scroxton, A., 2018. British Airways data breach worse than thought. [Online]
Available at: https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252451391/British-Airways-data-breach-
worse-than-thought
Senft, S. & Gallegos, F., 2010. Information Technology Control and Audit, Third Edition. 3rd
ed. New York: CRC Press.
Sen, J., 2014. Security and privacy issues in cloud computing.. In: In Architectures and
protocols for secure information technology infrastructures. USA: IGI Global, pp. 1-45.
Shmueli, G. et al., 2017. Data mining for business analytics: concepts, techniques, and
applications in R. New Jersy: John Wiley & Sons.
van Grembergen, W. & de Haes, S., 2009. COBIT as a Framework for Enterprise Governance
of IT. In Enterprise governance of information technology. Boston(MA): Springer.
White, S. K., 2019. What is COBIT? A framework for alignment and governance. [Online]
Available at: https://www.cio.com/article/3243684/what-is-cobit-a-framework-for-alignment-
and-governance.html
[Accessed 25 May 2019].
Zeng, L., Li, L. & Duan, L., 2012. Business intelligence in enterprise computing environment.
Information Technology and Management, 13(4), pp. 297-310.
Zhang, X., Wuwong, N., Li, H. & Zhang, X., 2010. Information security risk management
framework for the cloud computing environments.. s.l., IEEE, pp. 1328-1334.
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