British Airways Case Study

Q1. Identify goals, strategic planning, tactical planning and operational planning.

Answer:
Goals are the defined outcomes for individuals, groups or entire organizations. They provide
direction to the organization. In this British Airways case the ultimate goal of the organization is
to improve customer service and achieve high efficiency. They are taking all the steps to achieve
this desired goal.

To achieve the goals an organization has set, the organization makes strategic, operational and
tactical plans. Strategic planning involves plans that apply to the whole organization, are broad
in nature and are long term. In the case of British airways the strategic plan is to achieve 50%
self-service check in. If this happens this would lead the organization to achieve its ultimate
goal.

Tactical planning is to implement a strategic plan which is in shorter term more specific and in
the case we can see the tactical plan is to reduce check in queues and optimize space at
airports which will happen because of self-service check in.

Operational Planning involves carrying out very specific activities and policies in short term to
achieve our goals. In this case that very specific task is the installation of 190 IBM self-service
kiosks. It’s very specific as it tells you the exact number and make and model of the kiosk that
needs to be set up. This all come under operational planning.

Q2. Apply the type of plans to the case.

There are different types of plans which include the breadth, time frame, Specificity, Frequency
of use. We will address all of them individually how they are related to the case.

If we look the time frame type of plan it would fall into the short term category because
Airways being a very stable industry that even a plan which is of next 10-15 years will also be
considered a short term plan rather than a long term plan. All these plans will fall under Short
Term.

Addressing the breadth we have already seen that strategic plan is to achieve self-service check
in whereas operational plan is to install 190 IBM self-service kiosks.
Looking at the specificity part we can say that the plans in this case study are very specific as
first it says that they have to achieve 50% self-service check in and further it also specifies the
number(190) and make and model (IBM) of the kiosks that have to be installed.

Frequency of use category we could say that the installation of kiosks is a single use plan
whereas the optimization of space at airports could be standing plan that could be achieved
with various methods.