Air Canada’s Changes for Success

To:                Anthony Chan
From:                Arfa Malik

Date:                10/16/2018

Subject:                Air Canada’s Changes for Success

This memo will address Air Canada’s progress through the maturity levels of their strategic alignment. Strategic alignment can be assessed based on a company’s communications, IT value, IT governance, partnerships, scope and architecture, and functional skills.

Prior to 2003, the business departments of Air Canada had representatives in the IT department to represent the department’s needs. In an attempt to decentralize this ineffective process of need evaluation, the representatives were sent back to their business departments. With these changes, there emerged a gap between department workers and representatives and formed a silo environment where there was lack of understanding and communication within departments. This lack of communication then negatively translated into ‘departments to IT’ relationship and thus created inefficiencies. This prompted another change in structure where each business branch was assigned an IT rep. This streamlined business departments as representatives catered to departments as a whole rather than as silos. Furthermore, with the creation of G7, communication was strengthened in the top level management as well since the senior directors interacted with each other more often.

The three main branches had one common goal: to align IT and business side. Another objective was to create solutions to not only achieve the goal but be cost efficient. For example, by optimizing the process through which pilots and attendants chose their flights, allowed them to cut down on operating costs. Furthermore, by signing a contract with IBM and outsourcing (most) of their IT processes, they were not only able to cut costs but this allowed them to focus on their business side and provide value to the departments.