TOPIC: British Airways business strategies.
British Airways is the largest airline in the United Kingdom. The company has been the best in commercial aviation with more than 550 destinations around the world. British airways have been on the lead with innovative services. As well known it was the pioneer of scheduled international passenger travelers Airline connecting famous London-Paris route. British Airways introduced services of supersonic speeds jet engines airplanes for commercial flights. The company has about 46,000 employees with 6000 working outside the United Kingdom. The company enjoys more than 36 million customer base.
British Airways strategy
Investing in People and products:
The company invests heavily in continuous training of the huge staff base so that they can serve the big client base. As Janet Windeeatt, the company’s head of training comments, the company invests in training in matters since the company recognizes training as a key to delivering quality and satisfactory services to its customer. Customer service delivery is a key to business viability and growth. The company has adapted a program known as “BA Way.” This was a program to outline the company model and brand. The company energy to stay at top in the industry was to be demonstrated using the program. The company had to build and maintain culture of low-cost carriers and provides valued flight services. The company staff had to be trained and encourage to focus on these strategy.
The BA way program has several factors which has to focused on and form part of the company vision and strategic directions for its entire staff. These factors are: one, Be the best U.K based network, two, understand the Customers better than the competition, three, to be the powerful brand that people know and trust, four, foster a competitive cost base and five, to work together as a team. These five factors formed the company logo and motto. As the Janet windeeatt explained, it was of importance that the company engages on strong supportive teams that would ensure standard service delivery on the customers. The adapted program was a key on ensuring strong brand that would attract and maintain its client.
Beside strong, vision, mission and direction statements, the training department engages on regular training to team members on “Leading our future” program. These are interactive programs between management where every members share their views concerning the company’s on-going strategy and future expectations. These forums help senior and juniors share business matters and therefore help people understand the business issues. These forums also inform everyone and hence improve on the service delivery.
The training department conducts operational training, customer service training, management development, professional development and corporate initiatives in every company’s department. Pilots and engineers also undertake their highly specialized and technical training as well. The company has embraced E-learning method to facilitate its training to its employees. E-learning would convey much educational training more conveniently in various functions and directions. In these trainings the company engages on is to ensure that employees understand and appreciate their duties thereby deliver valued services to the British Airways customer. These all being a strategy to maintain dominance and stay focused on Airline Industry.
Marketing and technology:
British airways have been keen on technology adaptation. Recently they have gone digital marketing. Bigmouthmedia has partnered with British Airlines with task of building a multi-channel digital account to deliver ranging and innovative strategy for the British Airways. The intention of the campaign being to synchronize the company’s online strategy with its offline promotions and sales processes and hence enable the company lead on digital marketing ( pay pal option). The whole objectives of the company move to these campaign being to increase its Return on Investment and reduction the cost per action (CPA) the company on digital marketing investment. The second objective is to increase the web channel sales on its key routes. The campaign would provide a platform where British Airways can upgrade its investment based on performance of its business. This campaign is in line with company’s new technology adoption. Through these pay per click technology aims at enabling the company learn of user response and can adjust its operations in real-time. This is because this digital technology can provides data and reports in real time. This innovative management system provides information that help the company manage its operations depending on situations and demands. These integration help the business transact profitably.
Through the bigmouthmedia partnership the company has expanded its operations and business. Through research by bigmouthmedia British airline realized its primary business field which incudes targets such as flights, holidays and car rental , and secondary targets like city breaks, luxury holidays and ski holidays. These are strategies of ensuring the company stay in business and continues venturing in to new areas and services via technology innovation. These help company enjoy pride in delivering the high valued levels of services.
Its through the tendancy of British airways development into a wide range of innovation and technology that have made them embrace online tickets sales. the company run a website: ba.com where consumers would book and pay for their airline tickets. These self-service ticketing and online booking has made customer find it easy to deal with the company. This move has greatly welcomed by travel and tourism sectors contribute s the biggest industry in e-commerce payments. Through the online advert and promotions alone, British Airways was able to sell 20 percent of their tickets. With these kind of consumer shift to online business and minimized online fraud has created essential increase in revenue to the British airways.
Air travelers seem to be shifting for the airlines that offer high quality services, which have well followed schedules, on-time arrivals and offers low fares. Then airlines companies have got only to integrate their cost of operation with revenue returns and produce products and services that would best fit customer’s expectations. British airways have to also focus on adjusting its business strategy to those that stand a competitive advantage with its rivals.
Currently through the company’s website, customer are able to seek easily their preffered and perfect flights destinations based on their preferences. With the Tripseeker, customer can interact online and click to view information containing fares to specific directions with details on cost, key destinations consisting of city details and features, its climatology among more other descriptions. Once the customer establishes their destinations exhaust and make their decisions, they can book their freight easily and to their satisfaction. This technology hence enables the company to make necessary management adjustment to incorporate all taste and preferences of customers.
On corporate strategy the British Airlines has to be strong. For axample by being the member, you stand a chance of collecting and accumulating BA miles which are to be rewarded. The more you use BA flights, the more BA miles you have, when you use on the BA partners Airlines or you book a holiday packages and use selected hotels for your holiday, then your gain the BA miles. Whenever the member uses BA credit cards for shopping or rental their rentar cars gets miles. Then the more your miles, the far the company can fly you. These corporate relations with general clients is adaptation to ensure the company’s strong trust and sense of attachement with other corporate and people.
How new strategies have contributed to the Success of the British Airways Company in the current economic climate
Upgrading of existing products
The increase in demand for Rio saw the company doubling the number of frequency to this destination this in turn enabled the company to offer its customers more choice and greater availability. Brazil is experiencing a strong Economic growth which is a great opportunity for British Airways to be part of the growth. The company has gone further to offer the services in three classes namely World Traveler (economy), World Traveler Plus (premier economy) and Business class which gives the customer a variety to choose from.
This has seen the company recover passenger revenue which in turn will help the company offset its deficit by the end of the year. In line to attract more consumers who may feel dissatisfied with existing products, the concept of undertaking an upgrade allows for a successful venture. British Airways has therefore positioned itself strategically so as to face increasing market competition.
Creating new products
British airways have launched a map-based search tool on its website that has made it easier for holiday makers to find the best holiday places and events. The Tripseeker option allows travelers to easily search the British Airways world wide network that helps in their decision making based on factors such as temperature and prices. This has enabled customers to find the perfect flights for the perfect destinations just by making few selections on the type of holidays they want. This tool also allows customers to search for what suits them by just selecting their appropriate time of travel, temperatures they are looking for, budget and class of travel. Through this product customers of British Airways are able to choose from a variety of the destinations offered by the company.
The company has continuously revolutionized its operations by ensuring that its flights operate on time across a network which has increased customers confidence on the company. The company has also received positive feedback from its customers on the creation of the new First class cabin.
From these products the company has continuously managed to increase its revenue and customer base compared to its performance in the previous years. The company also scooped the Best Airline Worldwide and Best long haul Airline awards in this year Business Travel Awards. This has further strengthened the progress of the company towards being the leading global premium airline.
Going into Partnership (Merger)
British Airways and Iberia entered into an agreement of code sharing. This merger has opened up Latin America for British Airways Company on one hand and has opened up the Middle East to Iberia’s customers on the other hand. This merger has benefited customers of both companies because they are now able to mix and match Iberia and British Airways flights to suit their schedules and budgets. The two companies have benefited widely from a large platform of advertisement created by this merger which in turn has promoted not only the company’s sales but also its revenues.
New payment options
The company introduced the pay pal option that provides the safest, fastest and most secure way of booking and paying for flights. This option eliminates the need of providing the credit or debit card every time one is booking a flight. In line with evolving technology, new payment options are a good way to idealize market options that will create an enabling environment. This environment informs the management at British Airways to make informed decisions on advancing new markets.
This enables the customer to pay and book his flights at the comfort of his computer which in turn makes the activity not only fun to the customer but also beneficial to the company.
Use of social network sites to advertise
British Airways is on twitter and this has enabled it too reach a large number of customers. The company has realized that most people are always visiting the social networks on their free time and the only way of reaching them at these times would be to find them on these sites. These sites have enabled the company to reach a variety of its potential customers which in turn has increased its customer base thus profiting the company. The company also realizes that the best way to reach a customer is by finding him during his free time because at this time it is easier to capture his attention.
Addressing upcoming Issues immediately
The company had an emerging issue of pension deficits. To address this issue it held consultation with the trade unions and finally arrived at an agreement that maintained the company’s contribution at that the current level. This allowed the company time to recover from its current financial difficulty.
Cost Control
The company has reduced both fuel costs and non-fuel costs to a considerable level. The company has introduced structural change, cuts in external spending and capacity reductions. By so doing the company has managed to cut costs by almost 1billion pounds, that is 597million pounds reduction in fuel costs and 390 million pounds in non-fuel costs. The company has achieved this by working closely with its suppliers which has reduced non-fuel operating costs. This in turn has led the company to make operating profits after cutting costs by 10.5 percent. This was triggered by the new realities created by the global recession and the need to return to long term profitability. Cost control also ensures that competing companies are well tackled so as to remain relevant in the market.
Corporate Responsibility
The company is working with Solena Group that is producing jet fuel that is low in carbon. This has continued to improve the yields of the company and has enabled it to gain a strong position in the corporate world. The company won the award for the Best Corporate Social Responsibility for their continuous involvement in the community and environment. Encompassing other like minded groups can help in uplifting British Airways corporate responsibility.
Risk Management
The company is faced by a number of risks ranging from events causing long term network disruption for example weather conditions or civil unrest. To mitigate this risk the company has robust business continuity plans to reduce these risks to feasible extent. These measures have saved the company loss of revenue and additional costs in the last business quarter.
REFERENCES
http://www.britishairways.com/travel/about-british-airways/public/en_us
http://bit.ly/2McBWKY
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