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How Airlines and Aviation Organizations Are Using KanBo to Enhance Cross-Departmental Collaboration

In the post-COVID-19 business world, it has become increasingly crucial for airlines and aviation companies to make quick but informed decisions so they can ensure compliance with the latest SOPs while delivering a seamless experience to their customers.

At the core of high-performance decision-making, enhanced productivity, and overall improved efficiency are effective cross-departmental collaboration and communication. Without creating a collaborative work environment, airlines cannot foster growth, especially in these testing times.

As the workforce of almost all airlines is spread across multiple geographical locations with a substantial number of employees working from home, ensuring cross-departmental collaboration is easier said than done. Large organizations such as airlines have to deploy a digital infrastructure that features work visibility, informational transparency, and real-time collaboration across all teams to ensure everyone is on the same page. KanBo software is just the right work and business process management tool that can help airlines achieve their collaboration goals.

The collaborative work environment software relies on fundamental building blocks that include boardscards, and lists to categorize, monitor, and assess work progress regardless of the complexity and duration of the project.

United Nations Has Set Sustainability Goals and Targets for Airlines and Aviation Companies

Meeting sustainability objectives is one of the main motivations for major firms, particularly aviation industries, to strive operational excellence via flexible infrastructure. The more we learn about the importance of aligning company operations with sustainability goals in the future, the more resources, attention, and energy we will need to reduce the effect of what we do on the earth. That is why the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations has put out a set of objectives and indicators that can only be met if major corporations join in. The following are some of the most important goals.

Developing Infrastructure that is Robust, Sustainable, and Resilient

The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs has set a key goal of developing dependable, strong, resilient, and sustainable infrastructure to support economic growth and general human well-being. The organisations must focus on ensuring that everyone has equal and inexpensive access to job opportunities, as well as goods and services.

Promoting Inclusive and Sustainable Industrialization

The UN expects large-scale organisations, particularly aviation corporations, to aggressively foster sustainable and inclusive industrialisation over the next 10 years in order to increase the industry’s proportion of GDP and employment. These goals should be tailored to regional conditions, and organisations should aim to double their market share in emerging nations.

Improving Small-Scale Business Access

People in the vast majority of developing nations have limited access to goods and services, including regional and worldwide mobility services. Small-scale industrial and other firms should be encouraged to access aviation organisations so that the local population may discover economic prospects within their realm.

Increasing Resource Efficiency And Using Environmentally Friendly Technologies

Another UN goal for large-scale corporations like aviation organisations and airlines is to repair and modernise their infrastructure by 2030 in order to improve sustainability. They must also concentrate on developing clean and environmentally friendly technology, as well as assuring increased resource efficiency and improved industrial processes.

Advancing Scientific Research and Innovation

Large-scale firms, particularly in developing nations, should endeavour to stimulate innovation, increase scientific research, and expand the technical capability of their industrial sectors over the next 10 years or so.

  • Encourage and assist developing nations in constructing robust and sustainable infrastructure by providing improved technical, financial, and technological assistance.
  • Assist poor nations with domestic innovation, research, and development.
  • Attempt to offer inexpensive and broad internet access through improving rapid and simple access to communication and information technologies

Fundamental Challenges of Cross-Departmental Collaboration in Airlines and Aviation Organizations

While effective inter-organizational collaboration is the cornerstone of success in any industry, it’s become increasingly crucial for airlines and aviation companies trying to navigate through these challenging times. To ensure efficient collaboration between teams and departments, airlines need to focus on a multitude of requirements and prerequisites including the following.

1. Identifying Shared Goals to Improve Collaboration

When it comes to ensuring effective cross-departmental coordination and collaboration, one of the most critical factors for teams is to identify common goals and objectives and share related information in a timely manner. Airlines and aviation organizations that are currently attempting to grapple with the uphill challenges of the post-COVID environment have their departments in disarray which leads to subpar communication and work collaboration. Without any coordination between the essential teams, every department determines its own priorities and responsibilities resulting in poor synchronization. This particular issue is exacerbated by the fact that most departments are geographically separated as some teams are working from home while others are present at the workplace.

2. Ensuring Timely Knowledge Communication

Another factor that needs to be taken into consideration is the absence of knowledge and information communication. When teams don’t collaborate and identify and work towards common goals, they are more likely to withhold departmental information which doesn’t allow teams to come together and work as a single cohesive unit.

3. Timeliness and Frequency of Cross-Departmental Communication & Information Sharing

It has been observed that the communication between different airline teams and departments is rather limited. Employees tend to reach out to the members of other teams when there has been an issue that concerns both departments or when their help is required to complete a certain project or task. This means that most of the departments end up building and nurturing their own information and knowledge silos and the rest of the organization doesn’t have access to that data. This automatically creates an environment where cross-departmental communication isn’t only virtually absent but also leads to no sense of singular direction.

In the current business environment where airlines have to deal with managing remote teams, provide rapid response to crisis situations, and develop adaptive and flexible operational strategies, it has become imperative to ensure frequent and timely communication and information sharing between multiple departments. Unfortunately, most airlines are often relying on rigid digital tools that restrict their ability to develop a more communication-friendly culture.

4. Informational Accuracy and Collective Problem-Solving

When there’s a lack of collaboration and coordination between different departments, the accuracy of the information and knowledge being shared may decline to lead to results that don’t meet organizational expectations. With frequent collaboration and communication, teams can build processes and install checks in place to verify the accuracy of information so departments can continue to work on their projects without having to worry about the efficacy or credibility of the information.

Moreover, high informational transparency and work visibility across different teams allow everyone to come together and engage in brainstorming to solve critical problems. This also allows departments to identify bottlenecks and weaknesses quickly so corrective measures can be devised and deployed in a timely manner.

How to Overcome Cross-Departmental Collaboration Challenges with KanBo

Using KanBo for Seamless Cross-Departmental Work Process

According to the statistics revealed by GoRemotely, 75% of employees believe that collaboration between teams and individuals is essential to any organization’s success. On the other hand, 7 out of 10 employees said that digital technology helped them achieve effective collaboration between teams. That’s exactly what KanBo does for airlines and aviation organizations.

  • Develop and Foster a Collaborative Work Environment

KanBo enables airlines and aviation organizations to bring together all of their departments by accumulating all the conversations, documents, and operational processes in one central place. This means that real-time collaboration between individuals as well as teams becomes possible resulting in seamless work that leads to timely achievement of common goals and objectives.

  • Improve Cross-Team Communication & Collaboration

As airlines have no choice but to collect, sort, and manage large volumes of information, KanBo deployment introduces full informational visibility that’s essential for nurturing a culture of mutual respect and trust and helps organizations develop understanding across departments. This type of cross-departmental collaboration allows every team member to be aware of their job role, identify issues and bottlenecks in a timely manner, and work with other team members to ensure seamless progress.

  • Encourage and Assist Employees to Adopt Different Work Styles

As the information surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic is always changing, airlines have been forced to make necessary accommodations. KanBo enables large-scale organizations such as airlines to adjust and optimize their operations putting them in a better position to deploy custom business processes that can adapt to different types of projects and preferred work styles. This makes it much more convenient for employees of different departments to collaborate and communicate in real-time for enhanced efficiency.

  • Blending Strategy and Execution to Achieve Exceptional Results

KanBo provides airlines and aviation companies with an adaptive and flexible collaborative work platform that delivers a complete overview of the current status allowing them to make informed decisions and ensure effective deployment of their plans. KanBo also brings highly insightful visualizations to assist airlines in identifying challenging circumstances and situations so the teams are well-positioned to create rapid responses as changes occur.

  • Fast High-Performance Decision-Making with Quick Insights

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, airlines have been put in a precarious situation where they need to make quick but informed decisions. In order to do that, they need immediate access to data analytics and insights. KanBo brings live dashboards and reports that allow departments to acquire all the information required for quick but informed decision-making and strategic planning. With quick access to the relevant insights, all departments can ensure real-time collaboration between teams as well as employees.

  • Facilitate On-the-Go Cross-Departmental Collaboration with KanBo Mobile

Whether your airline’s employees are traveling, stuck at an airport, or find themselves in between meetings, KanBo also gives a diverse variety of offline features that enable different departments and their team members to continue their collaborative efforts.

  • Help Agile Scrum Teams with Collaboration Features

As the COVID-19 pandemic has put airlines in a position where they need to deploy a hybrid working environment, KanBo offers Scrum functionality to enable teams and departments to overcome technical and geographical challenges to improve work collaboration and communication. This allows agile Scrum teams to collaborate, communicate, develop, troubleshoot, and optimize in a seamless manner.

  • Use Kanban View for Collaborative Efficiency with Progress Supervision

With Kanban, airlines and aviation businesses can monitor work progress and provide timely feedback for different types of projects. This creates an enhanced collaborative work environment across multiple departments. Kanban cards offer insightful workflow visualization whereas detailed data analytics give access to real-time statistics allowing teams to enhance operational processes for improved real-time collaboration.

Encouraging Cross-Departmental Collaboration with KanBo

KanBo is a comprehensive work management platform that allows a variety of departments to create and foster a collaborative work environment that facilitates information sharing and mutual learning to improve productive interaction and engagement.

  • Manage Diverse Work Contexts with KanBo Cards

KanBo Card collects multiple work, business process, and progress insights through the most recent updates within a team. It provides teams with detailed work contexts in an organized manner. Moreover, the contexts keep getting updated in real-time so you always have access to the latest information. When an airline’s departments are engaging and interacting from multiple geographical locations, they have the ability to use cards to keep an eye on the progress. This ensures improved work visibility and informational transparency.

  • Use Document Groups for Seamless Collaborative Management

Airlines produce, receive, create, and manage thousands of documents on a regular basis. The features in KanBo are especially designed to allow departments to organize and manage similar documents into groups. You have the option to move up and down and collapse and expand these groups according to the current workflow.

  • Enable Frequent & Timely Communication Using Card Activity Stream

As different airline departments continue to work on projects and routine tasks, organization and management can turn into a major issue. They need to reconcile and visualize all the different dates, work progress, current tasks, relevant documents, and deadlines. Using Card Activity Stream, every team has access to the overall status of every project so they have improved clarity and transparency.

  • Rely On Mentions to Facilitate Contextual Communication

When a particular employee or group of team members are working on a project, KanBo enables team leaders along with authorized users to mention those individuals to encourage timely communication. Through the fast exchange of knowledge and information, KanBo ensures that each employee is working towards the shared goal.

  • Use To-Do Lists for Streamlining Work and Business Processes

Oftentimes, business processes and projects seem to be unnecessarily complicated but you can simplify them with KanBo’s to-do lists. They enable employees to split major tasks into smaller doable to-dos eliminating the complexity and complications of projects.

Fast Yet Informed Decision-Making with KanBo

Airlines need a comprehensive collaborative infrastructure that enables them to make quick high-performance decisions, complete projects and tasks, and be innovative and adaptive. KanBo brings all the features an airline requires to develop a cross-departmental collaborative work environment that delivers work visibility and informational transparency for fast decision-making.

  • Use Board Filters to Evaluate Progress from Different Perspectives

KanBo offers a diverse variety of filters that enable managers and employees to view the overall status of operations along with focusing on the details of any specific project. The filters allow them to choose from a multitude of parameters such as datesstatusesuserslabels, and card names.

  • Acquire Better Focus & Perspective Using Card Grouping

Since each KanBo Board accumulates a large volume of information and work contexts over time, it can often become overwhelming. Card Groupings can be used by managers to sidestep all complications and focus on one aspect of any task or project. The groupings can be achieved using multiple parameters including lists, users, labels, and due dates.

  • Be More Productive with Ambient Intelligence of KanBo Bot

This is an innovative digital assistant especially created by KanBo to assist large-scale enterprises such as airlines and aviation organizations so they can leverage the work management platform to its full extent. With the 24/7 availability of the bot, team members can receive smart assistance that promotes a sense of inclusion and equality across departments.

KanBo Assists Aviation Companies at All Levels of Management and Operations

Any organisation that wishes to increase operational efficiency, embrace cross-departmental collaboration and communication, and go big on creating a collaborative work environment requires a multi-level infrastructure. When infrastructure is divided across teams, it becomes more difficult to monitor work and information, resulting in inefficiency and redundancy. KanBo’s basic building blocks help managers, executives, and employees develop and optimise their work processes and project plans in a similar way. Whether you’re an executive or just a team member, KanBo offers all the building blocks you need for all kinds of hierarchical arrangements.

As a C-Level Executives‘ Digital Headquarters

Top-level management values a broad picture of the firm and a bird’s eye view. KanBo provides customers with the digital headquarters they need, including quick access to strategy, tasks, projects, information, knowledge, documentation, internal communication, and the organisational community, as well as critical applications. Instead than having to plan meetings and video conferences every day, they can make key decisions on the go.

Citizen Developers as a Low-Code Platform

Low-code platforms are a visual approach to software development that allows for quick application delivery without the need for manual coding. Low-code platforms were created to make app development more accessible to the general public, especially citizen developers, who are basically business users with no professional coding experience. These personnel include project managers and business analysts, for example. KanBo’s low-code platform allows users to make a big difference in a number of ways, such as reducing IT department backlogs, eliminating shadow IT, and taking control of BPM workstreams.

Citizen Developers as a No-Code Platform

NCDPs (no-code development platforms) enable non-coders and coders alike to create application software utilising graphical user interfaces and configuration tools. They don’t use standard computer programming, which might be tough to master. KanBo and other no-code development platforms, like low-code development platforms, promise to speed up the application development process. These platforms have gained in popularity as businesses deal with the concurrent trends of an increasingly mobile workforce and a limited supply of trained software developers.

Work Organization Platform for Information Workers

A process is a procedure that involves a series of steps that must be completed in order to produce a certain outcome. A project, on the other hand, is a short-term plan with the purpose of providing a one-of-a-kind product, service, or result. KanBo provides a single location with all of the tools employees, managers, and executives need to manage many processes and projects with ease.

Conclusion

As the airline and aviation industry attempts to recover from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the significance of cross-departmental collaboration has increased more than ever. In order to ensure business continuity, leverage opportunities, enhance business processes, and provide a safe and secure traveling experience to its customers, airlines need to promote both intra and inter-departmental communication and collaboration. That being said, there are major challenges to achieve a high level of work collaboration including subpar digital infrastructure, creation of informational silos, poor work visibility, and more.

KanBo is a multi-faceted collaborative work management software that empowers large-scale enterprises including airlines and aviation organizations to ensure cross-departmental collaboration, coordination, and timely communication. It provides all the building blocks that are needed for creating a work environment that delivers informational transparency, real-time collaboration, work visibility, and security.

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