British Airways to redirect IT spend

British Airways is focusing on new technology investments after cutting £50m from its IT budget.

BA's chief information officer Paul Coby told Computing its redundancy programme has been largely completed. The company is now switching to re-investment ready for a recovery in the beleaguered travel industry.

'I've taken 20 per cent off the IT cost, which is far faster than any outsider could. We need to focus on delivering things, not the turmoil of structural change,' he said.

Investment in some projects such as offshore software development in India has been virtually halted, but Coby says initiatives that will deliver savings have been prioritised - such as a BA-wide online purchasing system from Ariba.

Coby says the business case for eprocurement is based on savings of 'tens of millions of pounds'.

'Consolidation, standardisation, and simplification' are Coby's main objectives, which means reducing the hundreds of IT suppliers BA uses.

'I'd like five strategic suppliers who I will sit down with and tell them our strategy, and then outside that ten significant suppliers and several tens of others.'

Other major rollouts underway include an Oracle human resources system that will offer employees online self-service functions, and SAP enterprise resource management.

BA has also redeveloped its web site and introduced clustered servers to boost capacity, which has helped to increase the number of visitors, says Coby.

'Since 11 September we have put significantly more volume through the web site. We have seen volumes grow two and a half times since then and it is still going up at that rate, although we expect it to plateau in August,' he said.