Hildrens Picturebooks the Art of Visual Storytelling Salisbury Martin

How would you define your part as CIO of JetBlue?

As CIO of JetBlue, I am more like the Chief Integration Officer. My team and I need to come to the table with a broad prepare of functional knowledge including commercial, regulatory and compliance. Nosotros are the connecting tissue, which is a very dissimilar function for IT than five years ago.   Back then, the CIO would focus on software implementations, data centers, and security.  IT notwithstanding has to manage those functions, merely the real question the CIO should be asking at present is: How do we drive business value?

During my interview with JetBlue, the Chief People Officer asked me, "If you get this task, what will you do differently?"  My reply was "Why check-in?"  Many customers today are all the same showing upward at the airport, going up to the counter, and receiving a paper boarding pass. In this modernistic age, when we have digital technologies, why do we need to check- in? Why exercise we demand so many transactions when we travel?

As CIO, I demand to be thinking, "If a procedure doesn't add value, then we need to eliminate the procedure. If the process does add value, and so we need to automate information technology and eliminate as many steps as we tin can." A few months ago, we piloted our first auto check-in with a select grouping of customers. We told them, "You don't need to cheque-in with JetBlue anymore. We'll ship your boarding pass to you so y'all don't take to call back almost it." Our goal is to limit transactions during the travel experience; we want to make travel seamless. We think nosotros'll soon get to a point where we you lot won't take an individual boarding pass for each trip. Nosotros think your phone volition become a permanent boarding pass."

We believe that the customer feel should be transitional, non transactional. Most customers desire to experience services without touching a thing, whether they are at a movie theatre, a banking company, or an aerodrome. When it comes to self-service, we cannot pass our integration issues on to the customer – but that'southward how many companies await at self-service. Why do we fifty-fifty need a kiosk? At JetBlue, I believe that we volition not take them in five years. We are planning to examination many of these concepts in our Boston terminal.

What skills do you need to be able to drive this kind of change?

Some airline industry CIOs are limited past the fact that they grew up in airlines and are doing things the style they've been doing them for years. Every time a vendor tells me, "We do this for this airline," or "We exercise this for that airline," I call back, "just those companies have gone through bankruptcies, so to some degree, whatever yous're doing for them hasn't worked."

At JetBlue, we look to Apple tree and other retail businesses as the companies nosotros desire to model our brand and performance against. As CIO, I demand to bring in cognition from industries that excel in client service and in crewmember empowerment and efficiencies.

We too embrace the talent that comes from other industries. In the airline manufacture, people wait the highest level of customer service level at the lowest cost. Nosotros can only meet that expectation if we remember differently near traditional processes, since every footstep in a process adds cost. As CIO, I need visibility outside the airline industry, and I need to bring that knowledge and that talent to JetBlue.

I also accept to play a office in educating my leadership team when it comes to major process changes, similar auto check-in. I accept to show them that auto check-in is not just Eash's dream; it is our customers' and our crewmembers' dream. I have to be able to sell the story. What does auto-check in do? It frees up the crewmember who is standing in front end of the counter and they can now focus on delivering client service, not managing a transaction.  When telling the story of a new investment or plan, CIOs have to remember that it'south people get-go, and then process and and so engineering. We have to appoint people up front and explain what's in it for them. When you lot propose large scale transformations, people tend to focus on budgets and milestones, non what's in it for the customer.

Can you give an example of storytelling?

We are aggressively pursuing a mobile strategy for pilots. 1 way to introduce this kind of major Information technology programme is to say, "We're going to give tablets to everyone."  Then they respond, "Why are we getting these tablets? Are you going to starting time tracking us? Is this virtually keeping track of our hours on the job?" So, suddenly in IT, y'all are on the defensive: "No, nosotros're not going to track you." Another arroyo is to tell the right story to these pilots, who all travel for a living. "We want you to be connected when yous're in the plane. Recall of this device equally a connection to your part, but too to your family. Why carry two devices?" This way, you're reminding them of the importance of community and family; yous're not pitching a device.

 Too ofttimes, IT will say, "Here is this device and hither are all of these apps. You need to use this device to do all of these transactions from now on." And the pilots are thinking. "Oh great, now I have to fill out these forms; that's just one more than thing to do in my life." The better story is, "If you desire to sit in the lounge and check your banking concern statements, you can.  If you want a video connection with your family, yous can accept it."

Every bit CIO of JetBlue, I need to retrieve of the benefits of having a device in the cockpit that allows pilots to do their jobs better and be happier crewmembers, then I need to make that function of the story. About airlines accept had major challenges deploying iPads in the flight deck; we've had only excitement. These other airlines think of the legalities, risk, complication and expense, but we think more broadly nigh how these technologies empower our crewmembers' quality of life.

About Eash Sundaram and JetBlue

Sundaram joined JetBlue in 2012 as CIO. Prior to that, Sundaram served every bit Chief Data Officer at Pall Corporation, a global business in the diverse field of filtration, separations and purification. Prior to that, he held several Information Technology leadership positions in the Healthcare and Supply Chain Management industries. He holds a Primary of Science Degree in Transportation Management from the Land University of New York – Maritime College.

JetBlue is New York's Hometown Airline(TM) with other focus cities in Boston, Fort Lauderdale, Los Angeles, and Orlando. Known for its laurels-winning service and free TV as much as for its depression fares, JetBlue offers the most legroom in coach of any U.South. airline every bit well equally super-spacious Even More Space seats. JetBlue is also America's first and but airline to offer its own Client Bill of Rights, with meaningful and specific bounty for customers inconvenienced by service disruptions within JetBlue's command.

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Source: https://www.cio.com/article/250743/the-art-of-storytelling.html