Information Technology in Business: A Case Study of Emirates Airlines

This report analyzes the significant role of information technology (IT) in Emirates Airlines, highlighting its impact on various aspects of the business, including marketing, sales, service, and overall operations. It emphasizes how IT enhances safety, capacity, efficiency, and financial performance. The report delves into the importance of IT investments for improving business processes, enabling real-time financial monitoring, and simplifying operations like self-check-in services. It further discusses the requirements for IT implementation, such as establishing a proper IT infrastructure, hiring IT experts, and providing employee training. The report concludes that IT automation increases efficiency, optimizes revenues, and improves communication and security, making it a crucial tool for Emirates Airlines to maintain its competitive edge.

Running head: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN BUSINESS
Information Technology in Business: Airlines
[Name of the Student]
[Name of the University]
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Table of Contents
Introduction:....................................................................................................................................3
Information Technology Impacts: Emirates Airlines......................................................................4
Information Technology Significance:............................................................................................7
Requirements of IT implementation:...............................................................................................9
IT benefits:.....................................................................................................................................11
Conclusion:....................................................................................................................................11
References:....................................................................................................................................13

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Introduction:
IT or the Information technology is one of the important aspects of the airlines without
which it would have become almost impossible for the airlines to operate. Implementation of the
IT has been associated with bringing of lot of benefits for the airline such as customer retention,
operations of higher quality and many more (Avgerou and Walsham 2017). The operation of the
airlines is generally classified into five major sections which are associated with including the;
market, sell, serve, operate, and flight and this has been illustrated in the figure provided below.
In addition to the segments there also seen to be existing three major technological trends
which is associated with including the transformation of the operations of an airline, usage of the
big data in collaboration with the other latest technologies along with management of the CRM
or the Customer Relationship Management and lastly includes the switching of the paper based
works to digitalization.
The IT is associated with having a significant effect upon the airlines industry which are
seen to be related to the marketing and planning, sales and services and operations of the
enterprise. The report aims at analyzing the various kind of IT impacts along with analyzing
them so as to evaluate the benefits along with the limitations and the potentials which the
developments of the future are going to have (emirates.com, 2019). The organization which has
been chosen for analysis is associated with including the Emirates airlines which was released on
25th March, 1985 and along with this the government of the Country Dubai has been associated
with making huge investments upon this airlines for the purpose of making it the biggest airlines
of the Middle East.

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Figure 1. Airline operation segment that require information technology to be emerged
Source: (emirates.com, 2019)
Information Technology Impacts: Emirates Airlines
It is having a major role play in the airline industry as it is associated with the safety
along with the capacity, capability and efficiency of the airlines. Besides this it has also been
seen that the IT is having a Substantial Impact upon the financial and environmental performance
of the airlines. Considering the IT, the process of the Emirates Airlines is segregated into three
sections and this includes the Marketing and planning, Sales and services and the enterprise
operations.
Information technology usage in the marketing and sales makes the operators capable of
making plans along with assisting them in evaluating the predicting the revenue, scheduling
flights and many more. Additionally the IT usage is also responsible for boosting up of the
operations so as to make them much more efficient and in addition to this the problems are also
analyzed which are put forward because of the large data generation (Soomro, Shah and Ahmed
2016). Another critical element is associated with including the dynamic pricing strategy because
of the low cost airlines than the competitors. The profitability also gets maximized along with the

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revenues and the reason behind this is that the dynamic pricing strategy is associated with
responding as per the condition of the market so as to gain more competitiveness. Additionally
the IT usage helps in analyzing the price as well mainly those which are helpful for the
organization in meeting its objectives and goals.
Some of the major including of the IT usage in the sales and services includes offline
reservation along with the public relationships, service to customers and many more.
Figure 2. Overview of IT implementation on business process in Emirate Airline
Source: (emirates.com, 2019)
Below is the figure illustrating the Emirate airlines existing online reservation channel.

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Figure 3. Example of online reservation of Emirates airline
Source: (emirates.com, 2019)
Additionally, Emirate Airlines is also associated with the usage of the hybrid channel for
sales along with other channels such as the mobile websites, online travel agents and many more.
Figure 4: Hybrid sale channels for Emirate Airline
Source: (emirates.com, 2019)

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IT is also used for providing services to the customers such as lodging of online
complaints or providing of feedbacks on the companies official website, this in turn is associated
with helping in establishment of a good communication channel between the organization and
the customers (Schement 2018). Besides all this another major role is played by the IT in the
process of storing of information along with the being associated with facilitating the process of
communication all across the airport or outside the airline and this in turn displays the usage of
the Business Intelligence.
The discussion which has be conducted above is helpful in understanding the fact that the
IT is one of the core aspect or tool of the Airlines industry which not only helps in managing the
operations but is also associated with helping in communicating and analyzing the different
operations of the business (Taherdoost 2019). Besides all this it is also understandable that the IT
is associated with greatly increasing the speed of the business operation. All this reasons are in
turn associated with depicting the fact that Emirate Airlines surely needs the IT so as to remain
in top of the Airlines industry and for managing and gaining of more customers.
Information Technology Significance:
The studies which have been conducted so as to depict the correlation between the
profitability of the airlines and the IT usage is very limited. However the studies which has been
conducted and the recommendations which those studies have provided helps in concluding to
the fact that there is an essential need of making IT investments so as to make the managers of
the airline industry become capable of providing special attention towards the different business
process and become much more efficient (Sá, Oliveira and Nabais 2018). Additionally the
formulation of a clear IT strategy is to be done which would not only be helping in managing the
communications but would be also be responsible for analyzing those aspects which are to be

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perceived as the return of the IT investments and one such technology which is going to bring
upon a lot of benefits for the airlines is the IoT or the Internet of Things.
The above discussion helps in concluding to the fact that the IT is having a huge
significance for the airline industry and this significance is brought by means of adaptation of
proper strategies and by having a better understanding of the topology which are used in the
airline industry. Besides the IT is associated with enabling the real-time financial monitoring
along with the analysis, which in turn is associated with helping in recording of any kind of
failures or any risks which have occurred or might occur (Sirkemaa 2017). By having real-time
monitoring and analysis it becomes very easy to formulate the troubleshooting strategies which
in turn would not only be helping in solving of problems related to time but would also be
solving the problems related to the technology, management of the customers and operator so as
to convert the processes from complex to simple one. One such simplification of the operation is
the self-check in service which is associated with greatly reducing the work load imposed upon
the ground staffs and by usage of the self-check in customers would also be much more satisfied.
Figure 5: Example of self-check-in kiosk
Source: (emirates.com, 2019)

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Figure 6: Mobile technology for scan ticket
Source: (emirates.com, 2019)
Figure 7: On-flight free Wi-Fi for Emirate passenger
Source: (emirates.com, 2019)
Requirements of IT implementation:
The airline industry in order to use the IT must firstly have a proper IT infrastructure
along with the other systems and solutions which are needed (Lee, Thomas and Baskerville
2015). Along with a proper infrastructure there is also an essential need of hiring IT experts who
would be associated with providing support to the entire infrastructure along with being
responsible for managing the entire Information Technology Infrastructure. Besides this the IT

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experts would also be responsible for the designing and implementation of the entire IT
Infrastructure along with being responsible for making sure that the infrastructure which they are
implementing is effective for the entire organization (Löfsten 2016). Once the implementation of
the physical infrastructure gets completed then it becomes possible to integrate the airline
management system with it so as to help the different operations become much more efficient.
Figure 8. NDC reference architecture for airline
Source: (emirates.com, 2019)

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The figure presented above is considered to be an example of the airlines management
system which is integrated with the IT infrastructure (Faghih et al. 2018). Another major
requirement of IT Implementation is associated with including the arranging of training
campaigns so as to help the employees in becoming much more efficient and conduct their work
without making any kind of mistakes or errors. This in turn would be responsible in helping the
organization gain more profits by providing of errorless services.
IT benefits:
IT usage is associated with bringing a lot of benefits for the airlines industry by means of
automating the different process of the airlines industry which in turn increases the efficiency of
the organization and this helps in the optimization and acceleration of the revenues. Additionally
the IT is also associated with putting forward of a well-established communication channel along
with enhanced security of the information and many more. One example is the usage of the smart
applications which are responsible ofr better management of the operations along with being
associated with helping in providing of efficient service to the customers (Laudon and Laudon
2016). The usage of the online platforms has also been associated with changing the way by
which the airlines and the customers are associated with interacting with each other. Besides this
the automation is also associated with reducing different operational costs such as the cost
related to recruitment of more number of staffs so as to manage the different process.
Conclusion:
The above report is associated with helping in concluding to the fact that the usage of the
Information technology has been acting one of the major tool responsible for bring a lot of
changes to the airlines industry. The report has been associated with highlighting the importance

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of Information technology in the Airlines industry along with putting forward of the numerous
benefits of using the information technology in the airlines industry. The report is also associated
with presenting the fact that the benefits related to automation of the different operations are
responsible for making the organization become much more efficient and put forwards the need
of providing training for the employees so as to help them in becoming capable of managing the
new IT infrastructure that have been designed by the IT experts. So some of the major
requirements of IT experts includes the having of a proper physical IT infrastructure, recruitment
of IT experts and proving of trainings.