Originally Posted by
Final 3 Greens
Disclaimer, strategist and executive education tutor in a business school here - I am surprised that you misdescribe an overhead and some other definitions.
Identifying IT as an overhead is not an attitude, it is a fact, it's an ongoing expense of running a business and that does not infer that critical infrastructure is not an asset. An IT system is certainly an asset and like most assets, needs maintaining by the allocation of resources, costing time and money. However, IT does not directly fly planes, serve passengers, load baggage so it is classed as overhead expenditure.
Check in staff, ground staff etc are not assets they are operating expenses directly linked to the product/service and create a capability that is either mandatory (a table stake) or a differentiator that provides market advantage.
The 'issue' (why don't we just call it for what it is, a problem?) is when executive management in a company doesn't understand where a capability such as IT fits in the value chain primary activities and then reduces expenditure in the support activities to the point where it becomes unfit for purpose and detracts from the value proposition.
And this is the problem.
IT does fly planes (try flying one without a flight plan), serve passengers (booking and check-in, APIS, seat assignment), load baggage (load sheets - guess which bit of BA broke in the latest failure).
Check-in staff that can efficiently load a plane, ground staff that can safely load it, are an asset without intangibles like goodwill. Customer satisfaction with the travelling experience is related almost entirely to the staff they encounter.
I put it to you that an airline's staff are more important than planes, in this day of aircraft leasing, same with buildings, same with any piece of physical infrastructure; the only differentiator between one airline and another is the people who operate that airline.