This is a presentation I made for an airline in the UK. Sharing here with a broader audience

1. What tech companies do
differently?

2. Hello!
I am Faical Allou
You can find me on:
Linkedin: faicalallou
twitter: @faicalallou
2
All views my own

3. My background
3
ALC
PAR
CMN
CGN
BER
BZV
EDI
DUS

4. No one will ever book with an
airline whose motto is:
“Move fast and break things”
!
Before we start:
Airlines and tech companies are different,
but we can still learn from them

5. Sharing
Giving out ideas makes you richer; not like money
1

6. “
“Facebook was built on open source and that was
what got Facebook off the ground, so we’ve always
had that moral obligation to give back.”
James Pearce, Facebook head of open source
6
100 148 161 243
1328
2006
Skyscanner Netflix Uber Facebook Google Microsoft
# open source projects on github
Source: github, 24SEP18

7. Why open source?
7
◇ helps hiring: showcase the cool tech, creates a pool
of talent already trained
◇ stress test the tech with more users
◇ more hands to solve issues (can slow down)
Note: Yes there are patent lawsuit from time to time on core tech

8. Share the non-core!
Have you ever shown your excel
models to someone at AIRFRANCE?
8
…and not only for safety

9. Experimentation
Admitting that you don’t know,
and you don’t know how much you don’t know
2

10. “
“Our success at Amazon is a function of
how many experiments we do per year,
per month, per week, per day.”
Jeff Bezos
10 Source: fastcompany, 21SEP16
1000 1300
1976
7000
Netflix Intuit amazon Google
# experiments ran on the product in a year

11. How many are you
running at the moment?
11
◇ On you website?
◇ On your cabin?
◇ On your schedule?
◇ On your pricing?

12. How many are you
running at the moment?
12
◇ On you website?
◇ On your cabin?
◇ On your schedule?
◇ On your pricing? This is NOT your product
This is your product

13. Shorten planning periods!
You should be pushing for 12 or 52
planning periods instead of 2 seasons!
13

14. Empathy
Unlike ants, human beings can’t feel others’ feelings
3

15. “
Example: Front end to a database for activity tracking
15
Tech team building for salespeople
 Dated design
 No drag and drop
 Minutes to load
Tech team building for tech teams
 Everything you need to be
efficient and not waste a second
Note: Salesforce released an update early 2018 to catch up
Salesforce JIRA

16. “
16
What killed BlackBerry? Employees started buying
their own devices.
Washington Post
What killed Blackberry are all the decisions
that disconnected employees from users and
led them to build products less than perfect
and then buy iPhones instead of Blackberries
for their personal use.
“Have been dogfooding the new @Gmail for a while
now - very excited for this new redesign!”
Sundar Pichai

17. When was the last time you bought a full
fare ticket and flew with your airline?
17
◇ When was the last time you booked a flight with your
competitor?
◇ When was the last time you arrived late at check-in with a
non-refundable ticket?
◇ Do you realize that most of your users save an entire year
to afford one summer trip?
◇ Do you know how stressful and painful travelling is?

18. Rethink ID tickets!
Reconnect with your users, dogfood!
18

19. Misc.
Airlines are using Operation Research since the 60s but are falling behind
Be more agile
Manage bottom up, accept commercial failure, learn and move on
Trust the Data Science
Focus on users, not operation and not competition
Product and Prices should follow what users are willing to pay for

20. Thank You!
I published recently
Go get it, on amazon: “A Lifelong Flight”
20
eBook & Paperback