Andrew HM Lee

Cathay Pacific Case Study (APAC)

Video Transcript

Who is Cathay Pacific?

Cathay Pacific is a global airline with a headquarter base in Hong Kong. Currently they are serving over
60 destinations. They have around 30,000 employees serving their customers, and their revenue in
2019 is around two billion US.

What was the project and how big was it?

In EY we helped Cathay Pacific on their transformation program. So, through the transformation
program journey we worked together across their internal and finance department to help them to
transform their business model, their customer experience, and even to help them cocreate new
products. The aim is to make Cathay from a center airline to become a future modern retailer.

What challenge were they facing?

Cathay Pacific was facing four major challenges at that time. They were facing financial problems due
to the pricing and they were facing the competitive pressures from the low-cost carrier, and also the
customer expectations on their service has changed due to the digital disruptions. And last but not least
is the travel agency raising to the bottom of the price and directly impacting their margin.

How did we win?

At EY we have a multi relationship with Cathay Pacific and also myself actually I started as an employee
at Cathay, which I have an in-depth understanding on Cathay’s culture, and that’s also made Cathay see
us as a trusted advisor on their transformation journey. During the big discussions with the clients that
we were bringing in the deep industry knowledge and also the company’s knowledge across our service
line as well as the end-to-end transformation mindset to every single discussion.

How did we use future-back to help them shape the transformation?

Because of the strong relationship and trust we have with Cathay, we hosted a few future-back sessions
with the executives to define their wishes to become the future modern retailer and also to cocreate the
transformation journey with them.

How did you approach the solution with Humans@Center?

A great example for the Humans@Center is we invite the end customer to our Wavespace and to
cocreate a digital customer experience together with them, and also we help them and inspire them to
think out of the box and also to create a disruptive idea, as well as to test the experience together.

How did you approach the solution with Innovation@Scale?

A great example for Innovation@Scale is we try to change the way of working with the travel agency
and also to inspire them with the way of selling mindset. We help the travel agency to package and
experience for their customer instead of just one-off ticket selling. And also, we introduced the
crowdsourcing ideas to allow teams to launch new products.

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Andrew HM Lee
Cathay Pacific Case Study (APAC)
Video Transcript

How did you approach the solution with Technology@Speed?

Well I think a great example of Technology@Speed is we collaborate together with EY Mtel to build a
prototype for the app and web design for the new online booking process, and we iterate together with
the end customer. We also allow for the latest technologies on user testing at Wavespace.

What was the impact?

In EY we helped Cathay Pacific on their transformation program. So, through the transformation
program journey we worked together across their internal and finance department to help them to
transform their business model, their customer experience, and even to help them cocreate new
products. The aim is to make Cathay from a center airline to become a future modern retailer.

Do you have any advice to other EY teams starting their transformation

journey?
Well I think my suggestion is to take the future-back approach with the client and set the inspirational
wishes of the future for the first step. And we have to gather and research and involve in the process
of the solution at the time, and the diverse EY team generating innovative ideas and insights and using
prototyping, emerging technologies and data to prove the values in the market.

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