success story
JetBlue - The Challenge
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profile
New York-based JetBlue Airways
has created a new airline category
based on value, service, and style.
Known for its award-winning service
and free TV, as much as its low fares,
JetBlue serves over 50 cities in 19
states, Puerto Rico, Mexico, and the
Caribbean with more than 500 daily
flights.
industry
Transportation and Logistics
quickbase solutions
IT Project Management
IT Project Charter Management
Marketing Project Management
Learning Management
Resource Management
who’s using quickbase
Alora Chistiakoff, IT manager for IT
Revenue, and Tiffany Miley-Parks,
IT System Manager, and over 80 IT
project managers and business-unit
managers rely on QuickBase.
Intuit QuickBase
100 5th Avenue, 7th Floor
Waltham, MA 02451
781-370-4414
www.quickbase.com
corpsales@quickbase.com
Inconsistent, decentralized IT project management – slow response times and IT bottlenecks
No formalized project delivery structure to support a rapidly growing department
Frustrating, manual-based project tracking and status reporting
No consistent or centralized repository for capturing and tracking changes to projects
Inability to easily, collaborate with external JetBlue partners
The optimal use of technology is critical to the success of airline companies today. Whether it
is automated airline reservations, flight operations, telecommunications, Web site,
maintenance, check-in kiosks or in-flight entertainment – the performance, availability, and
reliability of these systems are critically important for an airline to operate and compete
effectively.
Continually aiming to improve its strength in technology, JetBlue has, over the past two years,
optimized its systems and exponentially expanded its IT department to meet the challenge. As
it realigned and grew, however, gaps emerged in how it managed its dozens of active projects.
“We lacked some of the central visibility we needed into the various projects and teams,” said
Alora Chistiakoff, IT manager for IT Revenue. “That was undermining our ability to give the
maximum value for our IT spend. We didn’t have consolidated views of how we were spending our time. We were tracking different data and metrics in different styles and schedules.
Without that consistency, we were attempting to roll that up manually – in Microsoft Word and
through e-mail – which was laborious, painful, and wasteful.”
“We wanted consistency in IT project governance for both IT and the business users we serve
so that we could be more responsive and manage expectations far better. That also applied to
external partners we work with for services such as flight-status notification.”
The Solution
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Familiar, cost effective solution to quickly address IT project management issues
Great home base for teams to see, share and update project info
Clear and timely communication of critical information with automated reporting features
Seven QuickBase applications and two prototypes up and running in only three months
Readily accepted and widely adopted solutions by JetBlue business users
Seeking a solution to quickly and efficiently address JetBlue’s IT project-management issues,
Tiffany Miley-Parks, IT System Manager, returned to a solution she’d used in the past
knowing that the customizable business applications from Intuit QuickBase were just what
JetBlue needed. “I was familiar with – and had successfully used – QuickBase previously,” she
said. “We signed up for a trial, started with the ready-made Project Manager Plus
application and quickly concluded that it was by far the fastest, most cost-effective and flexible
solution available. There was nothing to build, nothing to install, no hardware to purchase, no
resources to allocate. QuickBase took us off the hook for long-term management, scalability,
and support.”
The QuickBase Project Manager Plus application gives JetBlue a home base on the Web where
their teams can see, share, and update every detail of their projects – whether they’re working
across the office or across the country. That means simple, clear, up-to-the-minute
communication: no more e-mailed spreadsheets or outdated documents.
success story
“We were able to customize the application’s weekly status report table so that every week, our
project managers can update any activity for that week and expected activity for the following
week,” said Chistiakoff. “Now that they add in the current ‘project health’ based on where it all
stands, we can track week-over-week progress more easily. And we’ve recently added a change
log, so that we can maintain a single repository about the evolution of the project over time.”
the overall experience
According to Chistiakoff, the
popularity of QuickBase
extends well outside of the
IT domain. “The people
who are the happiest are
the business users.”
JetBlue IT has more than 70 active IT projects of varying complexity – as well as another three
dozen on hold or awaiting a start date. Today, the user base for one of our QuickBase
applications is 80 people primarily located at the company’s two IT facilities in Forest Hills, N.Y.
and Salt Lake City. JetBlue business partners have also been given access to our QuickBase
applications to help ensure that joint developments for projects, like flight-status notifications
and web site re-design efforts are synchronized and aligned. Most of our users will use QuickBase for initial project setup, adding tasks, issues and risks, change log entries and weekly
status reports, which is the most-used aspect of the system.
“Adoption of this system was really fast,” said Chistiakoff. “Once our users saw how straightforward it was to use, any resistance they may have had just melted. Our ability to customize
has also played a big role here. If I receive feedback from a project manager about seeing
certain fields in certain ways, I can make those changes immediately. Or better yet, we can
even set permissions to enable them to make changes themselves – giving them the ability to
create personalized reports. That has really led to the rapid, widespread adoption we’ve seen
with QuickBase.”
The Results
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Self-service reporting for business users
An effective way to tackle high-value back-burner issues
IT bottleneck has been alleviated – business users now see IT as a friend
No longer managing projects in Microsoft Word, e-mail, or spreadsheets
According to Chistiakoff, the popularity of QuickBase extends well outside of the IT domain.
“The people who are the happiest are the business users,” she said. “They receive ‘push’
reports on a regularly scheduled basis that show the status of their projects being worked on by
IT. They don’t have to hunt down a manager to get a status. Instead, they can get an update in
QuickBase, which is much more efficient and valuable.”
JetBlue is leveraging QuickBase in other areas of the company as well. “QuickBase expands
our repertoire of options,” Chistiakoff said. “Historically, we had built many of these
applications ourselves and that forced us to work on the larger projects. So the smaller groups,
who tend to have smaller projects, got overrun when it came to IT priorities. Now, using the
QuickBase platform, we are able to rapidly create and deploy QuickBase applications that
satisfy our users needs and also, continue to eliminate manual processes across the
organization.”
“My CIO is in love with QuickBase. He continually calls it ‘the best thing since sliced bread.’
Given what we’ve been able to accomplish in such a short time, I absolutely agree.”
Intuit QuickBase
100 5th Avenue, 7th Floor
Waltham, MA 02451
781-370-4414
www.quickbase.com
corpsales@quickbase.com