Ryanair

For a budget airline, keeping costs down is critical. So when Ryanair decided it wanted to encourage its customers to book online, it was important the site was easy to use.

"The secret is in the design," says Brona Kernan, the airline's head of IT. "It has to be intuitive. No one gets trained to use a website." Today, 97% of the airline's £1.3 billion revenues come via the web — split evenly between sterling and euro — helping the business to generate about £400m profits a year. Ryanair was formed in 1985 and today carries 27m passengers a year to 91 airports in 17 countries. Based in Dublin, it operates from a series of "hubs" at locations such as Milan, Rome, Frankfurt and London Stansted, where planes are kept overnight.

But with annual growth of about 22%, Ryanair was still looking to ensure its costs did not get out of hand. The answer was simple: staff could use the same self-service approach as its millions of customers.

A year after coming up with the idea, Ryanair launched its £1.3m Cable & Wireless high-speed network. This intranet links 14 corporate office sites at the hubs, plus other sites such as the Ryanair simulator in the east Midlands and the head office and call centre in Dublin. The whole network, which has a mirror back-up system, is run by a staff of just 16 IT professionals. The system works because of its speed and capacity, allowing the corporate IT function to be based in Dublin. "There are no head-office functions performed out at these bases, the employees do it themselves," said Kernan. Critically, that means no admin staff are needed at these sites.

By using the Ryanair intranet, pilots, cabin crew and check-in staff carry out a range of activities from booking annual leave to obtaining the weather reports needed for each flight. Engineering staff can get the details needed to maintain the aircraft.

"The crews come in, use the self-service terminals to print off everything they require, such as fuel reports, go to the aircraft and fly," said Kernan. "For somewhere like Frankfurt, which houses five Ryanair planes and where we fly 2m passengers a year, to have no office staff is a big deal. It means the first pilot in has to switch on the lights."

The system allows Ryanair to save money and increase its efficiency. With fewer staff needed, the airline knows payback is within a year. The check-in staff use the same network to access passenger details for each flight. The passengers themselves key most of that information in online.

"We took the web-based self-service concept that Ryanair had developed for its customers and, as we expanded across Europe, web-enabled all our management systems," says Kernan. "We use IT to leverage productivity per employee so the total number of head office employees has dropped while turnover and profits have grown."

Quadriga

When Hyacinth Nwana checks into a hotel room, he expects to be greeted by name. He feels the hotel should know his specific preferences for music, food and drink. Wherever he is travelling in Europe, he even expects to be able to tune into his favourite TV channels, such as Sky Sports and BBC News.

It's not that Nwana is particularly demanding. But as product and technology director of Quadriga, he knows what is possible with the technology available. And it's his job to help four and five-star hotel chains such as Crowne Plaza, Le Meridien and Marriott to keep one step ahead by offering these levels of customer service. Quadriga supplies 150,000 rooms in top-notch hotels across Europe with the in-room entertainment and communications services that have now become commonplace. Some 70% of its business comes from international hotels chains. Whereas once a guest may been offered simply the choice of Radio 2, BBC1 and the local ITV station, they can now select from some 50 movies — changed regularly — get online and choose from more than 200 pieces of music to download. All that in addition to a plethora of TV and radio channels.