I had the privilege of doing a turn-and-burn trip to Southern California last week. This was a round trip to So Cal and back in the same day. Nothing like business travel – it’s so glamorous….
I live just outside of Spokane, WA and as we are keen to say, “You can’t get anywhere from Spokane.” As is the case with most business travel, I had limited lead time to make my travel arrangements and I wasn’t willing to spend the gross national product of a small country to buy my ticket so I booked a flight on Southwest Airlines.
Full disclosure: I don’t own any SWA stock, I don’t know anybody that works for SWA and I’m not a regular flier of SWA, so this is just an observation on my part, and not a paid endorsement.
The usual flight time from Spokane to LAX is about 2:50. I left Spokane at 6:30 a.m. and arrived at LAX at 10:40 a.m. That may seem like a long flight until you consider that I visited two other states on the way down. We first flew from Spokane to Boise, Idaho. We then flew to Reno, Nevada and finally on to LAX. Now I know what you’re saying, “That sucks.” But I disagree. What other airline could have pulled off that feat and still got me to LAX 15 minutes early? If you travel often enough you’re probably mumbling under your breath, “Nobody.”
One reason SWA is so efficient is that they have virtually unlimited access to real time data on flight operations and the employees are not shy about communicating. This has a huge impact on your efficiency and makes for a more effective business operation. It requires an investment in technology and employee training and true empowerment of your employees. Does your company have this edge?
With a well designed mobility solution you can gain huge visibility advantages into how your business is operating and the power of real-time visibility is virtually a game changer. When you see what’s happening as it is actually happening, you can act appropriately to adapt to the current set of challenges and get ahead of the curve. Applied consistently, this process provides you with a huge competitive advantage and that fact is not lost on your customers. We all want to know what’s going on. Imagine a world where you could call a customer BEFORE your worker is late and let them know that you’re running behind schedule. You might be able to offer to either reschedule at the customer’s convenience or continue with the current appointment with the delay. While the customer may not be happy with any delay they are surely happier that you let them know early enough for them to make plans. If the cable company was only this courteous….
I’ve talked at length in previous blogs about Effectiveness being better than Efficiency. I still hold to that statement but let’s be honest, you can’t be effective if you can’ see what’s going on. With visibility comes the ability to act and act early and often (like voting in Chicago). You can adapt as the need arises and shuffle the workload as appropriate.
While most people would whine about a flight that gave them a 4-sate tour, I was truly amazed that SWA could pull it off flawlessly. I often have to look for the pearls in the pig stuff and this was one of those times but as a former field dude I was impressed with the efficiency of their operation (and the ticket was one third the cost of the next closest airline so it was worth the reduced expense for an extra hour).
I’m not suggesting you should have your employees sing their greeting to your customers or tell lame jokes as part of their safety briefing (another airline anomaly experienced with SWA) but you could probably benefit from the other aspects of SWA’s business model. Who knows, maybe someone will write a blog about how great your team was one day….. It beats a blog that goes in the other direction, that’s for sure.
Tags: Brian Philbin, Business Mobility, Business Process, Eff, Mobility - General
