Taking flight

If you're interested in technology for technology's sake, go to Cambridge University computer science department. BA CIO Paul Coby tells CXO about the true value of IT.

Walking into BA’s impressive Waterside HQ, a bustling glass-roofed mall near Heathrow airport, you are immediately struck by an understated sense of calm industry. As people buzz from floor to floor, office to office, there is a clear impression that everyone knows where they’re going and what they’re meant to be doing. It’s a description that just as easily applies to Paul Coby. Throughout our conversation he demonstrates a keen understanding of the balance that must be struck between business and technology in a global company like BA.

As one of the driving forces behind a complete revamp of the company’s IT and technology structure and only months away from the March 2008 opening of Heathrow’s glittering new Terminal 5, you would forgive Coby for being somewhat preoccupied. Far from it, he is a good-humoured and engaging interviewee who is extremely keen to talk to us about a job he clearly loves.

Taking up his current position just a day after the catastrophic events of 9/11 and with BA IT already having, in his words, “lost the plot” in the late nineties, it is clear that Coby has faced some monumental challenges. That he has experienced so much success is a testament to his approach to IT. “If you Google me, the phrase that sticks with me is, ‘There are no IT projects, only business projects,’” he says. “You know, I wish I could think of another one that would stick as well as that.” Self-deprecation aside, there’s a fundamental truth in that statement. “IT is very important. But it is only as useful as the contribution it makes to the rest of the business,” Coby continues. “I think IT departments often have trouble fully integrating themselves, getting themselves completely in line with the strategy and the business. And that’s what I tried to do from the start.”

Luckily, Coby had the support of a management team who were alive to the benefits of technology. “My colleagues, Rod Eddington, Willie Walsh now at CEO, and my colleagues on the Leadership Team, absolutely, quote, ‘get’ IT. They understand the power of technology to change the business.” he says. Revamping the booking experience for customers and developing easy to use online check-in systems are just two examples of the way careful application of IT has radically altered the way that BA works.

“What we've also done is used technology as the anvil on which we can simplify the business,” Coby continues. “So if you've got a process and if you're a legacy company with lots of complex processes in different departments, one way to pull it all together is to simplify those processes. And what better way to do that than to actually put those processes on systems, and use technology as a means to simplify them?”

But why was the company in such disarray with regards to technology in the late nineties? “I think the previous management hadn’t really understood its power,” says Coby. “I think people thought that technology, and BA wasn't alone in this, was a commodity. But actually smart use of IT is a key differentiator, particularly in a business like the airline industry, which is so dependent on technology.”

Follow the leader
So what does Coby consider to be the primary leadership responsibilities of the CIO in a company such as BA? “Firstly, to lead the IT department and to give it clear direction,” he replies without hesitation. “And one of the things we've done is follow three objectives that we've pretty much managed to keep standard throughout the nearly six years I've been CIO.The first one is to run the IT operation: do more for less and do it better. The second thing is to build the new technology systems that the airline wants and needs. The third thing is to actually work with the business to transform the business.”

He describes a principle he calls 3PI, which stands for proposition, process, people and then IT. “ First you need to work out what you want to do, then exactly how you’re going to do it and then how people are going to use it. Only after you’ve really considered all those things do you actually move on to the IT part of the operation.” It’s this commitment to usability and utility that marks Coby out among CIOs. Despite being a self confessed technophile, who is “fascinated and overexcited” by its possibilities, he understands that technology has to be practical to be successful. As he puts it: “If you're interested in technology for technology's sake, go to Cambridge University IT computer science department.”

It’s a point that dovetails with what Coby considers to be his other main leadership duty: “It’s about trying to be the voice of technology in the business,” he explains. “Quite often, IT people behave like they're an obscure and slightly extreme order of monks. They delight in using weird acronyms, calling all their projects by laughable names.” Smiling at the memory, he tells us about a particular project called Wombat. “That's the worse thing you can do,” he continues. “The job of the CIO is to express things in business terms. It's another resource and anybody who's smart enough to read a balance sheet or be HR director or run marketing, is absolutely smart enough to understand technology if you demystify it.”

Success stories
Asked to identify BA developments that he is particularly proud of, a few areas clearly take precedence. The improvements made to BA.com have made a significant difference in the company’s struggle against increasingly competitive low-cost airlines. “A big part of their model had been selling online,” he explains. “We were just selling very high-level fares and wondering why no one travelled on us or wanted to buy the things.” To turn this around required as much a change in business philosophy as in technology. “So we worked with the business, the revenue management people and the marketing people after 9/11, and started putting competitive fares out there online.” Taking the budget airlines on at their own game has clearly paid off. The company now sells about 80 percent of its direct point-to-point fares through the website and is a recognised pioneer of the e-ticketing which is becoming increasingly ubiquitous in the industry.

Another sector in which the web has accelerated growth is in online check in. “We're now beginning to hit 60, 70 percent of online check in.” Coby continues. “So actually, certain segments of my guys in the data centre sell more, and actually check in more people than we do at the airport.”

Continuing the momentum, there are major plans afoot to take BA.com to the next level. Though Coby is understandably coy about giving details of this as-yet-unreleased undertaking, utilising the increasing interactivity and connectivity of the modern web is clearly a major factor. Giving us a hint of what might be in store, he mentions the World Offers campaign, a recent collaboration with Google. “Online, you could zoom in and see exactly where you were going,” he explains. “We then mapped the hotels that BA Holidays were offering, so if you wanted to go and stay in the Hamilton Princess in Bermuda, you could zoom in there and take a look. Those sort of match ups are the sort of things we're doing.”

Successes in customer-facing areas are mirrored by those inside the company. “We've got something called Employee Self Service,” Coby says. “The idea behind this is that if there is something people want to do or need to do and you make it easy and put it online, then most people will use it. And if you provide the ones that don’t use it with training, then they will eventually use it too.” The system allows employees to check their pay slips and organized their rostered work hours, regardless of where they are in the world, a valuable tool for a mobile workforce such as BA’s. Amongst the various other functions there are those for managing employee travel and arranging sick leave. Since its implementation, the system has proved extremely popular, with 97 percent of staff now using it.

Coby also tells us of using Web 2.0 techniques like blogs and forums as tools to encourage employee discussion. “When we had the famous pensions debate we put up a discussion forum for pilots and flight crew. A very simple thing, but it allowed people to engage in debate and ask questions.” A similar experiment was carried out at the time of a threatened cabin crew strike. “Probably six or seven thousand cabin crew who came online doing that,” Coby continues. “And we had the cabin crew management were answering points that were raised.”

Though a certain number of those posted comments were unrepeatable in a respectable publication like CXO, Coby insists that it was a valuable exercise. “We got phenomenal feedback of all sorts,” he says. “You have to recognize that this debate is going to be going on out there, it's going to happen. We need to be involved and listening so we can facilitate and respond to issues.” An internal blog is currently being launched, a clear indication of BA’s interest in using current technology to build a more connected and reactive working environment.

Terminal velocity
Inevitably, one of the things at the front of Coby’s mind is the impending opening of Heathrow Terminal 5: “It's long overdue,” he explains. “T4 and T1 are very congested. They're running at about twice their original design capacity. The baggage systems are very old. So if something goes wrong, everybody feels it and it's an enormous strain for passengers and staff.”

The grand vision for the new terminal is of a bright modern space that will completely revolutionise air travel. With state of the art baggage systems and hundreds of check-in desks, computer networks and pervasive wireless networks, it’s clearly a massive challenge for Coby and his team. “It will be a wholly different experience for passengers, but underneath that is a heck of a lot of technology,” he says. “We're integrating all the systems for that.  And because it's a new building we're also taking the opportunity to actually modernize the practices around how T5 actually works.”

Coby explains how LEAN techniques were used with the T5 team. These proved to be extremely applicable to the airport system: improving flow, minimising waste and making absolutely the best use of time, ensuring that both bags and people can move through the facility with minimal disruption.

Going green?
With carbon emissions from air travel increasingly being singled out as a major contributor to climate change, there is serious pressure on companies like BA to demonstrate their green credentials. Though Coby readily agrees that his industry is a significant generator of carbon dioxide, he is keen to keep its impact in perspective. “The Stern Report on climate change points out that we’re only 1.6 percent of emissions. Road transport generates six times as many emissions and power generation 16 times as many.” He also points out that BA’s carbon offset, now a virtual necessity for almost any major business, has been running for longer than any of its competitors.

But quite aside from BA’s main business, Coby is clearly committed to ensuring his area of influence is as eco-friendly as it can be. “I've appointed an IT green coordinator,” he explains. “I chose the guy who actually runs the data centres, which will be the biggest contributor. We've already made some significant improvements. We've got 70 percent more energy efficiency from the laptops that we've bought. We've got a reduction in the overall cost of energy that we're using running the data centres, and we're tracking that. I've also asked them to come back with a really challenging target that we should go for.”

There are also systems in place to cleanly dispose of old equipment and a programme to recondition obsolete hardware for new users. Coby seems particularly proud of the work done in equipping a teacher training college in Nairobi with IT kit. The picture that emerges is one of a company that is grappling very seriously with environmental issues for personal, as well as financial and legal, reasons.

You might have thought that the workload already detailed would be quite enough to keep Coby occupied. However, even in the midst of all this activity he still has his eyes fixed on the horizon and the next development to come down the road. “Technology moves on and it's exciting when you don't quite know what's going to work, so you've got to be prepared to try things,” he says. “We’ve set up an innovation unit between the commercial guys and the IT guys, who are tasked to try some new things. So you still need that ability to take the right sort of risks. As we grow old and become the, you know, aging rock star there's still the flair and the ability to renew yourself.”

Terminal 5 by numbers

• Costing £4.3 billion, it will handle 30 million passengers a year
• 50 football pitches would fit over its five floors
• The baggage system can handle 12,000 bags per hour and has over 18km of baggage belts
• Six new lounges for premium customers will cover an area of around 15000 sqm
• More than 300,000 trees and shrubs are being used to landscape the area around the terminal
• Departures will feature 96 self-service desks and 140 customer service desks

In addition to his position as CIO, Paul Coby is the BA Director responsible for IT-enabled business change. He is a member of CEO, Willie Walsh’s, Leadership Team.

Coby joined the Civil Service in 1978 and held several senior civil service positions, including Principal Private Secretary of State for Transport. He joined British Airways in 1997, where he masterminded the move of BA’s Reservations, Inventory and Departure Control systems to Amadeus, as ‘Community’ functions. In September 2001 he joined BA’s Leadership team, as CIO responsible for the operation and development of all BA Group systems. 

Over the last five years he has reduced the cost of running BA’s IT operation by 43 percent, enabling the airline’s investment in industry revolutionising ‘customer and employee enabled’ systems to increase by 50 percent. These include the award winning ba.com, on-line check-in and Employee Self Service, which has made on-line the main way of doing business for both BA customers and employees. Coby has established the IT and Business Change team within the IT Department to bridge the gap between technology and business transformation.  

In October 2006, BA’s Im department was awarded Computing Magazine’s top Award for 2006 for Major Contribution to UK IT, and Coby won the UK CIO Innovator of the Year Award in March 2007.