Case Study - Jetblue and Westjet : A tale of Two Software Implementations

    The reservation system is more than just automated ticketing for an airline, it is the interface that customers come to know and love (or hate) as they find cheap flights, select seats, upgrade for more leg room, and cash in their frequent flyer points. Two discount airlines, jetblue and westjet, both chose to replace their aging system with software from Sabre, the company that owns havelocity and handles reservations for more than 300 other airlines. the similarity in their software implementation projects ends there, however, and the differences between them after some important lessons.

     Westjet, Canada's second-largest airline, was in the unfortunate position of going first. Company executives wisely decided to make the cutover during the winter, when passenger count was lower, but they didn't try to lower the volume further by limiting the number of tickets sold. they also decided against warning passengers that a change was coming until the go-live date. Westjet VP Bob Cummings commented, "We didn't want to telegraph dates so a competitor would put on a big fare sale."

     For the cutover, Westjet had to transition 840,000 customer accounts to the new system for passengers who had already purchased tickets, migrating the data from westjet's servers in Calgary to Sabre's servers in Tulsa. the migration suffered from glitches, and WestJet's website crashed. Customers suffered long waits and angry bloggers posted their complaints.

    WestJet had kindly invited Jetblue staffers to observer the transition, and the visitors eagerly absorbed the lessons. first, the knew they could avoid the website crash by bringing up a backup site. they also learned to emphasize communications and the alerted customers and other stake-holders weeks ahead. the jetblue blog was the platform they used to explain how the company was preparing for the software implementation. jetblue wanted to keep the number of passengers low when the cutover occured, giving employees more time to troubleshoot problems, so it pre-canceled 56 flights and restricted ticket sales on the remainder. To make sure customers didn't have to wait in long phone queues, the company hired 500 temporary reservation agents and kept them on bound for two months. Rick Zent, the JetBlue VP who led the project, said the extra agents were "one of the wisest investments we made."

     Although glitches occured and not all kiosks immediately functioned properly, observers gave JetBlue high marks. The whole company pitched in, and even executives were in the airport in shifts, solving problems and helping out. changing an airline's reservation system is an enormous, so its "brain transplant" caused minimal disruption.

Discussiong Questions

1. What are some key differences between the jetblue and westjet software implementations?

2. What are the advantages and disadvantages of communicating a major project in advance?

3. What are the advantages and disadvantages of adjusting business volume during a major business project?

4. Beyond not being the first firm to implement a particular piece of software, what other more general lessons apply for software implementations?

Created by :  

• Adam Fernando (0000009257)  
• Andri Alvian (00000004758)
• Aryo Theo (000000007083)

 Download the answer below : https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8MZGt1RavZPSlFPR3h0X1dBMUU