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Business as usual is no longer an option for twenty-first companies who are confronting precarious and ever-changing circumstances in the post-pandemic world.
This is particularly true for airlines and aviation organizations that aren’t only striving to ensure business continuity and operational efficiency but have to do so while being perpetually agile, adaptive, and responsive to evolving situations. Those airlines that haven’t been able to react quickly are struggling to streamline their operations and restore travelers’ confidence.
That’s why it has become increasingly crucial in the current business environment to build and implement adaptive and agile strategies to stay afloat. That being said, being operationally flexible and responsive requires large organizations to develop a robust infrastructure that ensures informational transparency, real-time collaboration, work visibility, easy supervision and monitoring, effective feedback and performance review, and most importantly, secure and timely communication between team members as well as different departments.
This poses a myriad of challenges for airlines that either don’t have a reliable and agile system in place or it’s inadequate to manage large volumes of work in an efficient manner. KanBo software caters to enterprise agile requirements building inherent flexibility, adaptability, and responsiveness in organizational systems. This way airlines can ensure quick yet informed decision-making and take immediate actions whenever necessary.
Biggest Challenges for Airlines in the Post-Pandemic World
COVID-19 has forced almost all industries to adapt and make necessary adjustments to their strategic planning and operational processes. Airlines aren’t any exception. In fact, they have been dealt the worst hand as social distancing, border closures, and travel bans have directly impacted their primary source of revenue. Now that vaccination plans are being rolled out around the globe and airlines can finally resume their operations, they still have to face a diverse range of challenges, bottlenecks, and roadblocks including the following.
1. Difficulty Planning Ahead and Modeling Projections
The most demanding aspect of the COVID-19 pandemic has been the absence of scientific and medical research related to the virus. All the information is being gathered, organized, scrutinized, and communicated on an ad-hoc basis. This means that businesses have no choice but to make decisions on a regular basis depending on the most recent discoveries and knowledge. Airlines are also facing this dilemma where they don’t have prior access to the data and information they need to plan ahead, predict outcomes, and model their projections.
From a business perspective, this puts them in an arduous situation where they are constantly forced to find an ideal balance between ensuring the safety of their employees and customers and continuing their operations while relying on recently acquired information that’s probably going to change the next week, even the next day.
2. Being Adaptable and Responsive to Always-Changing Situations
As airlines and aviation companies aren’t aware of when and how their acquired data and knowledge are going to change, it has become more and more difficult to adapt and respond to situations that are perpetually evolving. From safety guidelines and code of conduct to travel restrictions and administrative regulations, there aren’t only operational but legal and health concerns that need to be taken into consideration at every point of decision-making.
On one hand, this slows down the process of making the right decisions at the right time and also impacts the airline’s ability to deliver an exceptional customer experience. Apart from that, all these changes and modifications have to be communicated to all the relevant departments in a timely manner to ensure everyone is on board.
3. Ensuring Rapid Response to Crisis-Related Circumstances
For many airlines, probably the most demanding and complicated challenges of all involve providing rapid response in crisis-related circumstances. Often, there is no prior information related to suddenly imposed travel restrictions which lead to an immediate collapse in demand requiring a reduction in flight schedules. In a short period of time, the airline doesn’t only need to evaluate the news but requires a complete assessment of its repercussions for comprehensive risk management.
Such situations require effective communication and real-time collaboration between departments as well as employees so the airline can create and implement its emergency plan effectively.
4. Maintaining a Business Relationship with External Stakeholders
Many airlines aren’t just travel-service providers, they also bear the crucial responsibility of representing their country. It means that they have an inevitable need to nurture and maintain lasting relationships with the outer world including other airlines, vendors, suppliers, contractors, and even customers. The airlines have to make sure that their plans to continue their operations, honor partnerships, and overcome challenges are effectively communicated to all internal and external stakeholders.
5. Planning Special Flights
Arranging special flights is always a major challenge for an airline as there is a multitude of factors and variables that need to be taken into account. However, in post-pandemic circumstances, they also need to ensure the health safety of every person involved in the process of planning special flights which include repatriation and cargo-only flights.
6. Identifying and Implementing Ramp-Up Demand Structures
Just like travel bans and restrictions can suddenly plummet flight demand, partial or complete elimination of such restrictions can also lead to a surge. Once more, this puts airlines in a tough predicament as they have to identify and implement ramp-up demand structures so all the travelers can be seamlessly accommodated. This requires quick access to information and exceptional collaboration between teams to deliver an exceptional experience to the customers.
7. Creating New Hub Structures to Strengthen Revenue Stream
It’s not exactly a secret that the COVID-19 pandemic has led to major financial losses for airlines and the aviation industry as a whole. That’s the reason they cannot afford to forego any revenue-earning opportunities that may present themselves during these difficult times. The airlines seize such opportunities by coming up with new hub structures to bring tempting offers for both local and transfer passengers. This step requires access to data and insights for high-performance decision-making.
Moreover, the airlines also confront a major challenge in terms of ensuring close coordination with internal and external interfaces, for instance, flight operations.
Sustainability Goals and Targets Set by the UN for Airline and Aviation Organizations
One of the key reasons for large enterprises, including aviation companies, to pursue operational excellence through agile infrastructure is to meet their sustainability goals. As we move into the future and understand the significance of aligning business operations with sustainability objectives, the more resources, focus, and energy we need to spend to alleviate the impact of what we do on this planet. That’s the reason why the United Nation’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs has set forth a set of targets and indicators that can only be achieved when large organizations embrace play their part. The key objectives include the following.
1. Developing Robust, Sustainable & Resilient Infrastructure
The primary target defined by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs is to develop reliable, robust, resilient, and sustainable infrastructure to deliver required help in economic development and general human well-being. The organizations must concentrate on ensuring equitable and affordable access to employment opportunities as well as products and services for everyone.
2. Encouraging Sustainable & Inclusive Industrialization
During the period of next ten years, the UN expects large-scale organizations including aviation companies to actively encourage sustainable and inclusive industrialization to enhance the industry’s share of GDP and employment. These objectives should comply with regional circumstances and the organizations should set the objective of doubling their share in developing countries
3. Enhancing Access of Small-Scale Enterprises
In a large majority of developing countries, people have limited access to products and services, including services related to regional and international mobility. The aviation organizations should encourage the access of small-scale industrial and other enterprises so the local populace can find economic opportunities within their sphere.
4. Improving Resource Efficiency & Adopting Eco-Friendly Technologies
One more objective outlined by the UN for large-scale enterprises such as aviation organizations and airlines is to retrofit industries and upgrade their infrastructure by 2030 for enhanced sustainability. They also need to focus on introducing clean and eco-friendly technologies and ensuring enhanced resource efficiency along with optimized industrial processes.
5. Promoting Innovation and Scientific Research
In the next 10 years or so, large-scale enterprises should aim to facilitate innovation, improve scientific research, and enhance the technological capacity of their industrial sectors, especially in developing countries.
- Promote and provide help in developing resilient and sustainable infrastructure providing better technical, financial, and technological support in developing countries
- Provide assistance for domestic innovation, research, and development in underdeveloped countries
- Improve quick and easy access to communication and information technology and attempt to provide affordable and widespread access to the internet
How KanBo Helps Airlines Become More Adaptable, Responsive, and Agile
KanBo software offers an agile and flexible working environment that empowers airlines to accumulate information, visualize data, collaborate in real-time, provide enhanced work visibility, and manage a wide range of business processes across different departments. This allows a large and complicated enterprise like an airline to be more adaptive, flexible, and responsive.
Working with KanBo – Focus On What Matters the Most
According to a report by Owl Labs, a large organization’s employees spend almost 80% of their time on tasks that add little to no value and only 20% of the time is spent on crucial things that actually add value. KanBo removes these barriers through a diverse variety of features.
- Ensure Effective Collaboration
With KanBo, airlines can connect and engage their entire workforce bringing all the conversations, documentation, and business processes under one focused umbrella. This gives them the opportunity to collaborate in real-time resulting in innovative ideas and new initiatives which translate into superior performance and a seamless flow of work.
As airlines have to manage and organize large volumes of complex data, KanBo provides them with the informational transparency that’s required to nurture trust and deep understanding within their working environment. This seamless coordination allows everyone to stay on top of their objectives, identify issues proactively, and work together as a team to achieve shared goals.
Since information associated with the pandemic is changing all the time, airlines have no choice but to adapt. KanBo enables quick adjustment of processes and projects allowing teams to deploy the right methodologies that comply with the nature of the project and their chosen work style. The software features a user-friendly and intuitive interface that can be learned and configured with minimal supervision and training.
- Link Planning with Execution for Better Outcomes
KanBo is a multidimensional planning platform that doesn’t only provide airlines with an overview of their current business situation, it enables them to make informed decisions and execute them with ultimate efficiency. KanBo offers exceptionally intuitive visualizations and deep insights to help organizations monitor and create response strategies to changes as they occur ensuring they deliver the best experience.
- High-Performance Decision-Making with Data Analytics
With airlines being under immense pressure to make quick but informed decisions, there’s a dire need for meaningful insights and data analytics. KanBo offers live dashboards and reports allowing managers to have quick and convenient access to all the relevant data they need for enhanced strategic planning and decision-making.
Whether the employees are traveling in between meetings or commuting to work, KanBo brings offline features that enable everyone to be productive on the go.
- Run Agile Scrum Teams and Projects with KanBo
As modern workforce is often dispersed across a number of locations, KanBo’s Scrum capabilities enable airlines to overcome technical, departmental, and geographical roadblocks to encourage both horizontal and vertical communication. This allows agile Scrum teams to collaborate, modify, develop, and adjust in a timely manner to deliver high-quality final products and services.
- Kanban Brings Operational Efficiency & Streamlined Processes
With Kanban, large organizations have the capability to monitor the multi-faceted progress of all projects and business processes and deliver improved productivity across a multitude of teams. On one hand, Kanban cards provide workflow visualization while on the other, data analytics give meaningful metrics for a streamlined workflow.
From the airline’s long-term vision to short-term strategies, communicate strategic mapping that demonstrates shared goals while providing a singular direction for sustainable success. Identify and address dependencies across all departments to cut down unnecessary delays, add new cards to assign work and track progress, and visualize future plans with Gantt charts and timelines.
Building Agile Working Culture with KanBo
KanBo provides airlines with all the tools they need to develop and foster agile working cultures where work occurs beyond technical and geographical boundaries. The workforce acquires the flexibility to get the job done from anywhere, anytime.
- Support Contextual Work with KanBo Cards
Cards enable large organizations to create work contexts that are built around real-world elements such as contracts, documents, tasks, issues, and people. The software allows managers to choose who is responsible for a certain card and who is just a contributor. This defines responsibilities clearly enhancing visibility and transparency of work.
- Invite People to Work with You
Agility cannot be achieved without exceptional communication and collaboration. KanBo delivers exactly that and more. With features like inviting others, people search, and open book, KanBo provides every opportunity to the airline’s workforce to coordinate and collaborate with the people that matter.
- Find Existing Operational Knowledge
Repetitive work and tasks aren’t only tedious, they become a resource drain for any organization. KanBo enables airlines to identify and discover similar work contexts from where employees and managers can draw knowledge and experience to optimize their own work and business processes. By solving the challenge of effort duplication, KanBo helps airlines and aviation organizations save time, effort, and costs.
Support Work Style Diversity in KanBo
KanBo has been especially created to address a variety of preferences and experiences as it allows airlines as well as aviation organizations to enable distinct cross-generational work styles across different departments which translate into higher operational excellence and improved productivity.
- Create an Overview with Board Lists
When the number of KanBo Cards exceeds a certain limit, employees can rely on board lists to sort and organize multiple types of work. With every board list they can assign a particular name, color, and purpose to add context and clarity for everyone else.
- Use Labels to Prioritize Work
Labels give an easy way to manage and prioritize a multitude of cards delivering a distinct context. They feature customization options enabling managers along with employees to select names and colors of each label that aligns with the structure and intent of the project or task.
- Build High-Level Work Structures through Board Collections
When managers want to create a high-level structure and enable their teams to focus on certain tasks, board collections can be leveraged to combine contextually similar boards for easier navigation.
- Share Operational Knowledge and Experience with Board Templates
Board templates are perfect tools for departments that are looking to enhance the quality of planning and strategic management through the airline’s accumulated knowledge and experience. With these templates, both departments and individual team members can learn and adapt relying on organizational learning to improve operational excellence.
KanBo Integrates with Your Airline’s Software Infrastructure
Any twenty-first-century airline uses a technology stack that plays the role of the central core of its operations. KanBo natively integrates with a diverse variety of software infrastructures to cut down downtime and boost operational efficiency and productivity.
- KanBo On-Premises
As airlines need to adhere to government regulations and internal compliance policies for security purposes, they naturally prefer to stay within the walls of their on-premises infrastructure and firewall. KanBo on-premises delivers both security and functionality ensuring the airlines don’t have to compromise on one or the other.
- KanBo Native Integration with Office 365
It doesn’t matter which Microsoft Office 365 plan the airline has deployed, KanBo enables native integration with both Azure environment and Office 365. The agile work management platform can be integrated as an Azure Active Directory App or a SharePoint App.
- KanBo as Software as a Service (SaaS)
KanBo also offers a versatile SaaS feature which means the airline doesn’t need a dedicated IT department to bring the best out of its software infrastructure. They also have the option to select the country where their sensitive data will be stored and managed.
KanBo Assists Aviation Companies at All Levels of Management and Operations
Any organisation that wishes to increase operational efficiency, embrace cooperation and digitalization, and go big on data and digital 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 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 pandemic situation continues to evolve, airlines are finding themselves in perpetually changing circumstances which have made both decision-making and business continuity a crucial challenge. The airlines and aviation organizations have been cornered into a spot where they need to adapt, respond, and be flexible at every turn of time. The absence of updated information, lack of real-time collaboration, and little to no investment in building an agile infrastructure has amplified the complexity of these challenges.
In such a tough predicament, KanBo software brings all the tools and features in one place for airlines and aviation companies that are looking to become more adaptable, flexible, and responsive.
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