Westjet Airlines’ IT Governace

WestJet Airlines’ IT Governance
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Abstract
IT governance involves a framework which ensures the IT infrastructure of an organization supports and enables it to achieve its corporate strategies and goals. The discussion is based on a case study titled “WestJet Airlines: Information Technology Governance and Corporate Strategy.” The CEO of WestJet Airlines saw the need to bring a chief information officer (CIO) on board because airlines were becoming more sophisticated, considering the integration of IT. The corporate strategy of WestJet was dependent heavily on IT to deliver solid operational support and innovative guest experiences. The new CIO was required to assess the IT competencies as part its corporate strategy to gain competitive advantage. The management saw IT be critical to the company in achieving corporate growth and ambitions. The paper will discuss various aspects assessed by the CIO to respond to the concerns of the IT planning process. It will also discuss the lessons learned from the experiences at WestJet.
Keywords: IT governance, corporate strategy, business information technology
WestJet Airlines’ IT Governance
One of the aspects of the WestJet IT situation that Cheryl Smith assessed to respond to the CEO’s concerns is the IT planning process. She found out that each VP is various business units had to negotiate with the VP of the IT department for resources and priorities (Munro & Khan, 2017). The lack of coordination, in this case, wasn’t unsustainable because the stability of the relationships between business units and IT was in jeopardy.

Smith also assessed the systems, operations, and procedures. She found that the company had invented its operations around the needs of the company. Another thing that she assessed was the IT infrastructure and performance in comparison with similar companies in the industry. She carried out a benchmarking study to compare the company’s IT cost, budget and resources to industry standards to find out if WestJet was technically competent. Smith decided that her first course of action was to align IT with corporate goals. Smith’s assessments were important because it was able to highlight various strengths and limitations of the IT planning with respect to business goals.
Smith’s assessments were valid since you don’t only need IT satisfaction but also employees and customer satisfaction (Porter, 2017). Smith looked at all the factors or the organization, not just IT. She looked at what the business goals were and how to align them with IT. I agree with the assessments and believe that when conducting an assessment you need to look at everything from every angle.
Since the current method wasn’t working for the company, it was necessary to introduce a major change. For instance, employees lacked resources to complete all projects proposed. Smiths’ idea to make a yearly meeting where they all voted and then allocated all resources available to the project until complete would be more efficient.
I have learned that teamwork within an area can benefit the organization as a whole. Smith introduced a governance model which overhauled and also focused on stronger links with business units. She created five new business unit positions, where each person would be dedicated to making their unit successful. Smith then made an IT planning and budget unit, where this unit would dedicate its time to new projects and a budget for IT.
Reference
Munro, M., & Khan, S. (2017). WestJet Airlines: Information Technology Governance and Corporate Strategy, 1-13.
Porter, M. (2017). The Five Competitive Forces that shape strategy. Harvard Business Review.