Continental Airlines suffered from many performance-related issues that resulted in a breakdown of relations with its customers. Bethune’s Go Forward Strategy helped the airline make better tactical and strategic decisions, reverse this trend and increase clients’ confidence in their services. The strategy first established a centralized data centre and reduced the system fragmentation that personified the traditional system. Data centralization allowed the airline to make better decisions due to its access to real-time data and also reduced instances of fraudulent activities. The airline also reduced costs since it no longer had to pay numerous of specialists to attend to its data needs and could instead centralize these services under the oversight of an IT crew. The company could then receive and avail data simultaneously, meaning that clients and internal staff could make their decisions based on real-time, reliable information.
A real-time data warehouse allows airlines to control their data sources more efficiently by centralising these sources into one single system. They can then make better and more informed decisions by analysing large amounts of information in real-time. Airlines can formulate better strategies by accessing information from a multitude of sources and instantly making it available to the entire system. They also have better access to their revenue collection and accounting information, and can manage their payroll systems more efficiently and reduce cases of fraudulent transactions. Airlines can also manage their crew and flight operations more efficiently and reduce the downtimes and loss of client confidence associated with inefficiencies in these sectors. The constant availability of data to the customer base also ensures that customers are always well-informed and are, therefore, making better transactional decisions.
Traditional data warehouses were useful in helping the company make strategic decisions while real-time systems achieved this and provided a basis for informing the formulation of tactical decisions as well. Traditional systems also had a longer time gap between updates and made them at intervals ranging from daily to monthly while the real-time systems received updates every few seconds or minutes. Traditional systems were more suitable for helping companies summarise time slices and past information while real-time systems presented real, actionable and statistical data. Traditional systems were only accessed internally by specialized staff while real-time systems were utilized by the company’s staff and its help centres as well. Particular data segments were also client-centric and were subsequently made accessible to them. Legacy systems were only suited for access by a few users while real-time systems were available to multiple individuals in different locations simultaneously.
The real-time system’s most notable advantage is its reinstatement of a healthy relationship between the airline and its clients. Availing data to the customers makes them a part of the airline’s data chain and increases their confidence in the airline and its operations. The system also allows the airline to optimize its staffing situation by reducing the number of people working on data handling and management. The constant stream of information provided by the real-time system also means the airline keeps better track of its assets and manages them more efficiently, thereby reducing mismanagement and fraud. Better asset management also means that the airline can dedicate some assets to ensuring that it improves client experiences by providing client-centric services. Such interactions lead to more customer satisfaction and increase the possibility of customer retention.