Presentation:
IT at the centre of business transformation
How IT can be deployed to help cut costs, nurture innovation and improve customer service.
Paul Coby, CIO of British Airways, is the BA Director responsible for IT and IT-enabled business change.
He is a member of Willie Walsh’s, Leadership Team. Paul’s business principle is – ‘there
are no IT projects, only business projects’.
Paul joined the Civil Service in 1978 and held several senior civil service positions, including Private Secretary
to the Secretary of State for Transport. Paul was asked to join British Airways in 1997. He masterminded the move
of BA’s Reservations, Inventory and Departure Control systems to Amadeus, as “Community” functions
and in September 2001 joined Rod Eddington’s Leadership team as CIO, responsible for all BA Group IT.
Over the last seven years, despite enormous increases in processing storage and network power, he has reduced the cost
of running BA’s IT operation by 45%, enabling the Airline’s investment in industry revolutionising ‘customer
and employee enabled’ systems to increase by 55%. Indeed the Business Plan for 2008/2009 has total investment in IT at a
higher level than the cost of running the existing IT for the first time. BA’s successful IT investments include the award
winning ba.com with on-line check-in; and Employee Self Service, which has made the internet the principal way of doing business
for both BA customers and employees. Paul has established the IT and Business Change team within the IT Department to bridge the
gap between technology and business transformation, using Lean techniques.
In October 2006, BA’s Im department was awarded Computing Magazine’s top Award for 2006 for Major Contribution to
UK IT, and Paul won the UK CIO Innovator of the Year Award in March 2007. In June 2007, Paul was also named the UK's top CIO on
silicon.com’s CIO50 list of the 50 most influential and innovative IT leaders in the UK. In 2008 he received, on behalf of
Willie Walsh, the premier Indian NASSCOM IT industry award for IT Enabled Business Transformation.
Outside work Paul’s primary interest is his family, but he also tries to make time for a little skiing, the
development of a database of Roman forts and military units in the first Century AD, and his interest in pre-1914
railways in Britain and Germany. Since his time teaching at a School in Kenya, Paul has been interested in Opera,
but also World music, and is a devotee of the WOMAD Festivals in the UK and around the world.
In 2003, Paul became Chairman of the SITA Board. SITA is owned by the Air Transport Community and provides
network services and IT solutions in 220 countries across the world. In 2006 Paul led the restructuring of SITA
into a single entity for its customers – ‘oneSITA’. SITA has an annual turnover of cUS$1.5
billion. Paul is also on the Board of On-Air, the SITA/Airbus Joint Venture, which provides on-board voice
and data connectivity.
In 2006, Paul also became Chairman of the eSkills UK CIO Board. eSkills UK is working with employees,
educators and government to transform IT skills at all levels and ages in the UK economy and society; so
that the UK will be able to derive maximum benefit from the power of technology to transform business
competitiveness and productivity.
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