WestJet Airlines: IT Governance and Corporate Strategy Analysis Report

This report analyzes WestJet Airlines' IT governance and corporate strategy. It begins with an introduction to WestJet and its early success, followed by an analysis of its key strengths, such as customer satisfaction and cost-effectiveness, and challenges, including the need for better IT-business alignment and disaster recovery planning. The report then explores the role of Information Systems (IS) in supporting WestJet's operations, emphasizing the importance of IT in marketing, revenue generation, and security. The study further investigates how alignment between IT and business functions can be improved, focusing on process change initiatives and unified systems to enhance competitiveness. The report concludes by emphasizing the need for restructuring to boost revenue and reduce expenses, along with the importance of robust IT operations for 24-hour support and troubleshooting. References to relevant sources are also included.

The case is WestJet Airlines: IT Governance and Corporate strategy
Report

Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Analysis...........................................................................................................................................2
Key strengths and challenges of WestJet.....................................................................................2
Role of IS in supporting WestJet's...............................................................................................3
How can alignment be improved at WestJet and its outcome?...................................................4
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................5
References........................................................................................................................................6

Introduction
WestJet Airlines started in 1996, is one of the largest careers which handles the region of North
America. It has been working under the IT Governance and proper corporate strategy with
focusing on the IT governance and the connections with proper role play for the organization and
to make the decisions and strategy. The idea is leveraged through using spare tool where the list
of issues are assessed with problems and their summary. Here, the discussion has been about the
handling of the organizational and the process change initiatives that leads to the development of
new state of art with supporting proper guest service applications as well.
Analysis
Key strengths and challenges of WestJet
Considering the strengths of the WestJet, it includes:
a. The department focus on the lower costing of the air careers with less span of time that
has been able to gain a better positioning in the market.
b. The customer satisfaction is the major concern of the firm where it has been holding the
position as the marketing leader to maintain the standards effectively (Munro et al.,
2013).
c. WestJet works on the adherence of the development of technologies and then recycling or
supporting the use of the recycled materials as well.
d. It ensures the proper training and the funding to maintain the higher standards of the
responsibility for the environment.

e. The success of WestJet is based on handling the different strategies of management with
properly handling the customer retention that is formulated and worked upon with
emphasizing on the customer services and the customer relationship (Brady, 2008).
The higher reflections are on the profitability with increased dependence on the passenger
revenues rather than having any form of diversified source. For this, the weakness are the
problems with obstructing the future growth of the firm.
Challenges are:
a. The improper functioning of the business unit for which there is a need of aligning a
proper IT and business function.
b. There were problems with internal functioning, planning, building, operating and then
maintaining the system.
c. The issues were related to handle the negotiation of the resources with the prioritizing of
the inability to handle business units which leads to the longer execution time as well.
d. The system has a major lack of backup. WestJet needs to work on handling the disaster
recovery and the security procedures as well to formulate it and use IT as a tool
e. The operations and the processes with challenges that there are no proper allocations
done to IT staff who worked in the night timings (Bourjade et al., 2017).
Role of IS in supporting WestJet's
Considering IT operations at WestJet, the company is working on marketing shares and their
improvement to achieve a better sustainability in the market. Here, the day-to-day operations are
important for focusing on stressing the leadership with co-creating a better IT strategy. The
major impact comes with inventory assets, revenue generation and the security standards in order

to avoid the threats. Apart from this, there is a need of restricting the IT in WestJet Organisation
from resource contention. IT setup in WestJet needs to be designed with cost-effectiveness and
proper planning. The annual budget process includes the allocation of resources and projecting
the funding through defined and aligned business and IT goals. The recovery of the disaster is
through maintaining the continuity of the operations and then work on the client centric approach
as well (Ringham et al., 2018).
IT has been also helped in working over the developers and application support of the people,
where ERP system groups need to be handled with project managers and proper business
analytics. The request for the IT project is never stopped or limited where the recognition is
about annual budgeting process to decide on the capital and operating projects. The redundancy
of the data projects and then handling the site coverage 24 hours in a day has been important for
WestJet Airlines Operations.
How can alignment be improved at WestJet and its outcome?
The focus is on working with the IT transformation which includes the signaling approach and
working with long established practices. The implementation of the process change initiatives
with combining new state of art helps in supporting the guest service applications that are putting
into productions. It will lead to the elevation of the business through new technology which are
falling behind for the competitive forms and standards. The problems are related to handling the
identity change from technical to business positions (Deng et al., 2017).
According to Smith proposal, there are merits for WestJet that lags the competition for the
business and IT setup. Here, the unified system works on handling the common infrastructure in
the office. It leads to the creation of lack in coordination with expanding plans important for the

company. If the company wants to tap the international market, it can easily be done through the
partnering with the other airlines and then working on the routes as well. There is a need to
manage with the exchanging of codes and then using the network for the other airline setup with
increased profits. The IT governance at WestJet is holding the changes with focusing on how one
is able to bring the change in the strategic goals with IT setup. The IT department does not cost a
higher pricing for the company, but it surely helps in growing faster.
The outcome could be determined with changing the planning and process of budgeting. It
includes the focus of projects and how the important projects need to be completed, with
considering the resource scarcity. Here, there is a need to check on the organizational data
structure and work with people 24*7 availability. There are cut down and then holding on
specifications based on business units. The formation of operations is through handling problems
of individual departments. The assigned control is for the resources with company working on
no-added responses. The creation of independent data would lead to serving the backup with
unpredicting certain calamities which tend to arise with breaking up infrastructure (Bourjade et
al., 2017).
WestJet needs to work on handling lower comparisons to the competition where IT department is
for the life and other business functions. The operations are important to be properly worked
with specific functions for the business. IT budgeting and planning is about focusing on
unaccounted resource allocation where the projects do not receive any important resource, but
the problem is related to the different natural calamities as well.

Conclusion
It has been seen that there is a need to work on the restructuring process which helps the
company establish a proper growth of revenue with reduced expenses. It includes the efficiency
increase with process and procedures. The process of annual budgeting includes operations that
are important for simulating the growth and then working on recovery steps that are important
for robust system. The IT operations are able to form the onsite 24-hour coverage for responding
to the outages and then handling the troubleshoot problems. It will lead to the improvement in
the culture of people at the company sector.
References
Bourjade, S., Huc, R. and Muller-Vibes, C., 2017. Leasing and profitability: Empirical evidence
from the airline industry. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 97, pp.30-46.
Brady, K. 2008, February. Advantage & disadvantages of a managing PMO model - Clarety
consulting- IT strategy made simple. Retrieved October 4, 2016, from Clarity Consulting,
Reference at<http://www.claretyconsulting.com/it/comments/advantage-disadvantages-of-a-
managing-pmo->
Deng, Q., Ji, S. and Wang, Y., 2017. Green IT practice disclosure: An examination of corporate
sustainability reporting in IT sector. Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in
Society, 15(2), pp.145-164.
Munro, M., Khan, S. 2013. WestJet Airlines: Information Technology Governance and
CorporateStrategy. Richard Ivey School of Business: Ivey Publishing.[4] Annual Report. (2014).

Retrieved from <https://www.westjet.com/assets/wj-web/documents/en/about-us/financialReports/WestJet-
Annual-Report-2013.pdf >
Ringham, K. and Miles, S., 2018. The boundary of corporate social responsibility reporting: the
case of the airline industry. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, pp.1-20.