FREE online courses on Information Technology - Chapter 2 FRAMEWORKS FOR IT - Who Needs a Ticket

 

Continental Airlines was the first trunk airline in the industry to offer ticketless flying on a significant number of its domestic flights. It was closy followed by United. Instead of printing the tickets on normal ticket stock and mailing them to travelers, the ticket is a record in a computer database. Valujet, a small regional airline based in Atlanta, began using “E-tickets” (E for electornic, of course) a few years ago, and Southwest Airlines started offering them on all flights in January of 1995. The airlines hope to save millions of dollars from not issuing and processing paper tickets.

 

E-tickets are aimed at frequent flyers on business trips. A traveler can make reservations, buy tickets, arrange refunds, and change routes by using the phone and a credit card. You do not have to worry about picking up a paper document or leaving (or losing) your ticket. With an E-ticket, United lets you change your flight up to an hour before departure (of course, there may be penalties, but you can charge them to your credit card). If you request it, you will receive a printed itinerary showing your flights, but no tickets. You can ask for a receipt by mail or fax. At the counter the day of the flight, you must identify your self with a photo I.D. or a passport. (it is interesting that you don't need a photo to buy a regular ticket!)

 

Figure to be inserted

 

It will take time for E-tickets to catch on as only about 50% of travel agencies have reservations systems that are compatible with them. However, the trend is clear; in a few years airline tickets will disappear. What other opportunities are there to replace documents with an electronic record? Or they may be inter-organizational systems (IOSs) information technology for this text appears in Figure above.

 

As the figure illustrates, information technology supports individuals, workgroups, organizations, and linkages among organizations. Individuals use this technology to help execute managerial tasks like designing the organization, formulating corporate strategy, making decisions, and so on. The changing technology we described in the section above enables the organization to develop applications to support all the tasks involved in managing the firm. The key parts of this framework are:

 

¨       A focus on the organization as the most important component of the study of information technology.

¨       The role of technology in supporting managerial tasks.

¨       The pervasive nature of technology in the organization.