Delta And Northwest Airlines

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Management Information Systems – Case Analysis

Management Information Systems A Case Analysis on

Delta and Northwest Airlines: The Business Value of Customer Self Service Kiosks

Submitted To: By:

Submitted

Mr. Somanath Murthy

Utsav Shah

Delta and Northwest Airlines: The Business Value of Customer Self Service Kiosks

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Management Information Systems – Case Analysis

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Contents Case Summary.................................................................................................3 Important issues..............................................................................................3 Some Positive points of the use of IT in such scenarios...................................4 Some Negative points about the use of IT in such scenarios...........................5 Recommendations...........................................................................................5 Answers to the Case Questions.......................................................................6 Q – What technologies and functions are provided in the self service kiosks? What other services can be provided?............................................6 Q – What is the customer value for such self service kiosks for airline check-ins?.....................................................................................................6 Q – What is the business value of such self service kiosks in the airline industry? do they give the airline company a competitive advantage?........6

Q – What is the business value of such self service kiosks in the airline industry? do they give the airline company a competitive advantage?

Delta and Northwest Airlines: The Business Value of Customer Self Service Kiosks

Management Information Systems – Case Analysis

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Case Summary: In this fast age customers want everything to be as fast and as easily available as possible. For travelers the best trip would be the one in which they have to spend less time and efforts at the airport for checking in. Thus Delta airlines had planned to put up information kiosks at various places at the airport. Generally people have to spend a lot of time waiting in the queue for their boarding passes, checking the baggage or any other enquiry they want to make. These information kiosks provide the customers by helping them in check in for their flights, getting boarding passes for originating and connecting flights, select or change seats, request for stand by for an upgrade, check the baggage, change flights, etc. As a result of these kiosks, the customers saved 5-15 minutes of their time which they used to spend standing in the queue. Moreover, because of this system, much more number of customers could be handled at the airport and in an easier way. The Delta airlines plans to add a large number of more of these kiosks as they are the cornerstone of a broader airport strategy to offer the customers more control. Since the project was implemented a huge sum of money was put into it but the payback from the project has been enormous. They were checking in a much more number of customers as compared to previous times. These kiosks were purchased from Kinetics, which is the top producer of these kinds of kiosks. These kiosks are all very well networked, having touch screens as the user interface which makes it even more user friendly, along with a thermal printer to print the boarding passes of the customer as well as a magnetic swipe card reader to get the details of a customer and about their credit cards.

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Management Information Systems – Case Analysis

Important issues: The important issues as far as the airlines authorities are concerned are: To reduce the time spent by the customers, waiting in the queue for checking in. Thus they want to increase the number of people using the automated information kiosks. The competitions amongst the various airlines are increasing to woo the customers, so they need to take some steps, which would attract more customers and what better then implementing information

kiosks

which

reduces

the

waiting

time

for

the

customers. Also, the use of these information kiosks would reduce the manual work and automate the whole process which makes it easier for the customers as well as the employees at the airport. Another issue was that they need to install more number of new kiosks so that they can cater to these customers in a faster way such that the customers do not have to wait long for their turn to come.

Some Positive points of the use of IT in such scenarios: Fast and timely availability of information Accurate Information The use of IT in such scenarios would reduce the costs of the company by a huge margin and helps them earn huge margins. Although, they need to invest a lot initially but all that pays off if the implementation is done properly

Delta and Northwest Airlines: The Business Value of Customer Self Service Kiosks

Management Information Systems – Case Analysis

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The updates about the information can be done in a rapid way which would be reflected at all the places, instead of manually passing the information. Less use of manpower to implement the tasks The customers can sit back home and do most of the things like booking the tickets, getting their boarding passes, getting their luggage pass, pay for the extra luggage, change or modify the seats, change the flight and much more. Thus, the crowd at the airport also would reduce and would cause the company to attend lesser people. Sometimes, the customers do not feel like going to the customer care center to ask about some doubts. This problem can be solved by using such Information Systems

Some Negative points about the use of IT in such scenarios: Technical Failures: In case of a technical failure in the system, the whole system or the network may go down, causing to halt all the activities and leaving the customers nowhere, which can be very serious sometimes. Security: Proper care has to be taken about the security aspects of the information in such systems because of someone infiltrates in to the network and alters some data; it can be fatal for the customers and can also cause problems for the authorities of the company. Unemployment: The use of IT in such scenarios may sometimes cause a fear of unemployment amongst the existing staff. Dominant Culture: While IT may have made the work easier and efficient, it has also caused to dominate over a lot of other weaker things, which can cause a feeling of insecurity amongst the employees of the organization.

Delta and Northwest Airlines: The Business Value of Customer Self Service Kiosks

Management Information Systems – Case Analysis

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Recommendations: The current system implemented by Delta Airlines doesn’t provide to the customer, the facility to check-in the baggage remotely. According to it, the traveler has to enter the details of his baggage in to the system via the internet site. If there is any extra baggage, he can pay online for it. Once the baggage is registered, the customer gets a code for his baggage. When he goes to the airport, while checking-in at the information kiosk, he only has to enter the code and the baggage would be checked automatically in just 5 minutes and the check-in process would be completed. Most of the transactions should be encouraged from the home only through the company’s website which cause the hustle at the airport to reduce. To implement this, initially they need to give the users some incentives so that more users can use the system. The system should be made in such a way that it has functionality for multi language features, as on an international airport there are people visiting from different countries of the world.

Answers to the Case Questions: Q – What technologies and functions are provided in the self service kiosks? What other services can be provided? Ans.– The TouchPort which is being manufactured by Kinetics USA provides the best of the available technology system for the implementation of the Self service kiosk. The system consists of: Intel® P4 Processor 2.8 GHz 15” Touch Screen Display (Optional 17” Touch Screen Display Available) 8” Wide-format Thermal Printer Magnetic “Dip” Style Card Reader Built-in System Support Snap & Go Installation Ease of Serviceability Delta and Northwest Airlines: The Business Value of Customer Self Service Kiosks

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System Reliability ✔ The system is completely customizable and can be modified to include a large number of features as per the requirements of the buyers. ✔ Moreover, the system is easy to maintain is not very costly also. The other features which can be added to the existing system are already mentioned in the above topic.

Q – What is the customer value for such self service kiosks for airline check-ins? Ans.– Without the use of such information kiosks, the customers had to spend a lot of time waiting in the queue for checking-in the airport. Moreover, the customers who are frequent travelers and business class people who do not have much time get annoyed with such long waiting times. As a result, such a system would definitely help the travelers and a lot of customers would be delighted to use this system and it creates a lot of value for the company as well.

Q – What is the business value of such self service kiosks in the airline industry? do they give the airline company a competitive advantage? Ans.- These fully automated information kiosks provide a very high business value for the airline industry which is one of the most emerging fields because of the increasing globalization. Thus a large no of people keep travelling for business purposes to various countries. These corporate people do not like spending their precious time waiting in the queue to check-in to the airport. As a result, the implementation of such self service kiosks are always of a very high value for the airline industry as it helps them getting more customers. Yes, they do give an airline company a lot of competitive advantage. When an airline company implements such an information system, by which a customer can do all the things sitting at home and has to just walk in to the

Delta and Northwest Airlines: The Business Value of Customer Self Service Kiosks

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airport half an hour before his flight would surely give that company a competitive advantage over the others who are not implementing. Because the customers of those airline companies have to spend a lot of time after coming to the airport when the other company lets them do everything at their convenience.

Delta and Northwest Airlines: The Business Value of Customer Self Service Kiosks