Project of the Year Awards: British Airways

The terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 left British Airways with a major task to restructure its organisation and cut costs.

The airline instigated its Future Shape and Size strategy, aimed at reducing staff numbers by 13,000 through a series of business initiatives.

One of the programmes launched was the Employee Self Service (ESS) project to provide tools that allow staff worldwide to manage much of their day-to-day administration themselves over the web.

What were the business objectives of the project?

The two-year project has a target of saving £50m, but the aims are wider than simply cutting costs, says Philip Matthew, head of the ESS programme.

'We want to create a self service culture among staff to match the customer self service culture we are creating,' he says.

''It involves a radical simplification of our back-office and major changes in culture.'

The project has an £8m budget, with a core team of 20 staff, supported by 'business champions' in each of BA's 15 departments, such as crew and engineering.

'This links together a range of corporate initiatives,' says Matthew.

Each department was set four 'transformational targets:'

* 80 per cent of employee administration will be self service

* No duplicated or paper processes

* Never train offline if you can train online

*All information to be available 24x7 worldwide

What were the key milestones in the implementation?

The ESS business plan was launched in March 2003, and the overall programme runs until March 2005. One of the critical milestones was the launch of the ESS portal in September last year, which requires staff to have a single secure password for all applications, with easy access worldwide.

What technology was used?

'This was not a new technology project, it is about the exploitation of technology,' says Matthew.

'It's about getting the most out of things we already have.'

BA developed the ESS portal in-house, based around its existing intranet, for just £50,000.

A variety of tools and suppliers contributed to the portal, such as Adobe Workflow, RightNow, Ariba procurement software, Oracle's human resources applications, and Lotus SameTime and QuickTime for instant messaging and collaborative working.

Matthews says BA was also strongly supported by Cisco.

How did you manage the business change and people issues involved?

'At the heart of ESS it is about business change and a self-service culture. It is not technology led, it is business led,' says Bill Francis, the day-to-day ESS programme manager.

Every part of the system has a simple front end, and the project team did a lot of user acceptance testing.

'If it's intuitive and easy to use, you find people really start to use it,' he says.

BA put in place a top-down governance structure for the project, starting at director level, and made the initiative a corporate priority as part of its business plan.

'There is also a huge communications campaign internally,' says Francis.

'We began a process of involving the business. Fifteen departments went through what we called 3e - to engage, educate and exploit the technology.'

He says the key consideration for staff was to ensure there is a benefit for them to use the portal by offering essential administrative tasks such as rostering, leave and pay.

To make sure staff continued to use the system after their initial training, the company adopted a policy that all alternatives will be removed.

'We are saying that there is one way to do a process. The more of those single corporate processes there are, the more you can join 15 departments into one,' says Francis.

What results were achieved?

'The real measures are around the take-up - it's what people do that matters,' says Matthew.

Some 85 per cent of staff worldwide - 40,000 people - have used the portal, and 91 per cent of UK staff have done so.

B y March, 25 per cent of training was provided online, 80 per cent of personal administration is carried out through the portal, and 85 per cent of orders are placed online.

'We are delighted with that reaction,' says Matthew.

What were the lessons learned?

'Would we have done anything differently? No,' says Francis.

'We used a hybrid team of IT and information management specialists, with people with business skills. That combination has really worked,' he says.

'We set targets early on and measured continuously. Every month we provided a comprehensive dashboard of how we were doing against those. If you can't measure it, it's extremely difficult to show you are winning.'

For example, Francis says the company knows that of its 3500 flight crew, just 47 have not connected so far.

'It is very powerful to have those measures,' he says.

The project is backed and monitored by a governance board, and at a recent meeting, its members said they were really pleased to be associated with the programme, says Matthew.

What were the business benefits and return on investment?

At the end of the first year, £22m of savings had been achieved out of the £50m target, says Matthew.

Self service transactions have trebled, with an average of 10,000 unique users per day and five million page views per month on the intranet.

Online training has increased by 25 per cent, and 60 per cent of the ESS portal users access the system from home, rather than in work.

Several processes are already online, such as payroll and travel. For the £5m spent so far, the company achieved a six month payback period.

How do you plan to build on the project further?

Francis says the next steps are to implement Oracle's i-learning software in July, which will improve worldwide access to online learning, with tighter controls and tracking of training activity.

Improved reporting functions will allow directors and departments to access self-service reports.

And the team is considering how to increase connectivity to the portal.

'In the UK, we are looking at kiosks for front line staff, and what that will mean for Terminal Five. Overseas we are looking at things like bandwidth, VPNs and compression tools,' says Francis.

'We need to move from a centrally-driven project to make this business as usual to give sustainability and make sure the changes stick.'

And Matthew says: 'It's not about building things, it's about getting into the culture of the business and getting the system used. So far, so good.'

Computing says:

Faced with the biggest crisis in its history, BA placed IT at the heart of its recovery. The company recognised it needed a cultural change across the organisation, and the ESS project has been a vital part of achieving that goal.

BA's ESS project has brought together a wide-range of initiatives that on their own would have presented a challenge - such as e-learning, online purchasing and single password sign-on for users - and provided a system that staff have embraced with enthusiasm, as well as delivering significant cost savings.

Project at a glance

BA launched its Employee Self Service (ESS) programme in March 2003 as part of its company-wide business recovery plan after 11 September.

The aim of the £8m project was to save £50m by encouraging greater use of self-service administration by staff.

Central to the programme is the ESS portal, launched in September 2003, and developed in-house by BA

Functions such as payroll, leave applications, rostering, elearning and online procurement are available through the portal

Worldwide, 85 per cent of BA employees have used the system, and £22m of savings have already been achieved.

The portal receives five million page views per month, and 60 per cent of staff access the system from home.