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From a technology standpoint Trevor Didcock, CIO of easyJet is assessing how the airline delivers disruption information to travellers as well as examining the possibility of allowing them to check in using mobile devices.
In the back office of the bright orange Luton HQ there are also strategies to improve the way easyJet segments its data."At the moment we are not very sophisticated in our personalised marketing. We are getting Sitecore CMS and that will start to improve personalisation of our offering this year," Didcock explains.
"We also have a big data warehouse that does a lot of segmentation as we are looking to bring all that together. With BI there is so much that you can do; not only with customer information, but also on time performance: our guys can get granular information to take them down to why a plane didn't leave on time."
Didcock explains that every one of the 204 Airbus planes easyJet operates converses with the company's IT, telling it when the door's shut, when the aircraft leaves and sharing a host of other data. This has allowed the airline to assess fuel usage, ground control service levels and implement single-engine taxi propulsion to save on expensive fuel.
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Didcock divides the business into two distinct areas: sales and operations.
"Our website does £3bn worth of transactions a year, so it is very much an online retail platform and is the most visited travel website in the UK. Operations and commercial IT teams are split, supporting very different platforms: I have a cross-functional team for architecture and it is fascinating as you have to link the two."
On the commercial side easyJet is developing an app to meet increasing demand from smartphone users. EasyJet already captures £5m of revenue a month through mobile devices but Didcock hopes a dedicated application will make the process of supplying information easier for travellers.
"They are doing it on a BlackBerry and it's impossible on that. I did an Esta form for entry to the US once, it was very frustrating," he quips.
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