It's That Old Story of David vs. Goliath

Malcolm Gladwell, writing for The New Yorker, talks about strategies underdogs can take to compete and win against bigger, better skilled and sometimes more complacent "big guys" steeped in tradition or ways of thinking.

Innovation often occurs when the rules are thrown out or used in the opposite way they were intended. Organizations must decide whether "David" actions are supportable and sustainable as a long term strategy, or if they are most suitable for short term goals and tactics.

Vivek Ranadivé is an elegant man, slender and fine-boned, with impeccable manners and a languorous walk. His father was a pilot who was jailed by Indira Gandhi, he says, because he wouldn’t stop challenging the safety of India’s planes. Ranadivé went to M.I.T., because he saw a documentary on the school and decided that it was perfect for him. This was in the nineteen-seventies, when going abroad for undergraduate study required the Indian government to authorize the release of foreign currency, and Ranadivé camped outside the office of the governor of the Reserve Bank of India until he got his way. The Ranadivés are relentless.

In 1985, Ranadivé founded a software company in Silicon Valley devoted to what in the computer world is known as “real time” processing. If a businessman waits until the end of the month to collect and count his receipts, he’s “batch processing.” There is a gap between the events in the company—sales—and his understanding of those events. Wall Street used to be the same way. The information on which a trader based his decisions was scattered across a number of databases. The trader would collect information from here and there, collate and analyze it, and then make a trade. What Ranadivé’s company, TIBCO, did was to consolidate those databases into one stream, so that the trader could collect all the data he wanted instantaneously. Batch processing was replaced by real-time processing. Today, TIBCO’s software powers most of the trading floors on Wall Street.

Ranadivé views this move from batch to real time as a sort of holy mission. The shift, to his mind, is one of kind, not just of degree. “We’ve been working with some airlines,” he said. “You know, when you get on a plane and your bag doesn’t, they actually know right away that it’s not there. But no one tells you, and a big part of that is that they don’t have all their information in one place. There are passenger systems that know where the passenger is. There are aircraft and maintenance systems that track where the plane is and what kind of shape it’s in. Then, there are baggage systems and ticketing systems—and they’re all separate. So you land, you wait at the baggage terminal, and it doesn’t show up.” Everything bad that happens in that scenario, Ranadivé maintains, happens because of the lag between the event (the luggage doesn’t make it onto the plane) and the response (the airline tells you that your luggage didn’t make the plane). The lag is why you’re angry. The lag is why you had to wait, fruitlessly, at baggage claim. The lag is why you vow never to fly that airline again. Put all the databases together, and there’s no lag. “What we can do is send you a text message the moment we know your bag didn’t make it,” Ranadivé said, “telling you we’ll ship it to your house.”

The Evolving Experience of Air Travel

A new survey just released talks about customer service improvements the airline industry has made recently.

Passenger satisfaction with airline service rose 3.2 percent earlier this year, the first increase in six years, according to a University of Michigan study to be released Tuesday.

The increase came as the number of passengers dropped and airlines reduced flying. Also passengers checked fewer bags as luggage fees became more common, making it easier for airlines to keep track of the bags that remained. Enplanements on U.S. routes dropped 1.5 percent in 2008, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

And if fewer passengers are the reason for the improved satisfaction score, imagine how happy they'll be this year, when the FAA expects domestic boardings to fall 8.8 percent.

This has not been my experience.

I took my first business trip of the year this week and several surprises were awaiting me as I navigated through my itinerary. Atlanta was my airport of origin for this trip, and Delta my airline of choice.

My first whirl on the new airline roller coaster was the inclusion of Northwest in the Delta landscape. The kiosk application, which was pretty good when it was Delta, was now some Frankenstein Delta/Northwest application whose touchscreen was intermittent and navigation logic was erratic. Doesn't make me feel good about that merger.

My second surprise (though I had read about this change some time ago) was the $15 charge for a checked bag. I don't begrudge the airlines for finding ways to increase their revenue, but I can't help but think this mechanism is counter-productive.

For this business traveler, it's another punch in the face for my continued loyalty. Yes, the fee is passed through to their clients, but it adds another delay to an already long process of getting to the plane, it adds another receipt to be reconciled in the expense report, and it appears to provide incentive to those who already overcrowd the cabin space with bags that really should have been checked in the first place.

It would make more sense to me to charge those who drag their bags onto the plane. The cost of delays in boarding, departure, deplaning, and resulting stresses on airline personnel and travel guests has got to be greater than the cost of checking baggage. I'd like someone to point me to the research.

My third jolt at the airport came at the newly redesigned security check lanes. Looks like a step in the right direction. Except when the security guy at the metal detector tells us (in his most pedantic voice) to put away our boarding passes ("We don't check those anymore").

I agree that checking the boarding passes at that point is superfluous, but TSA people, you've been pounding the "please have your boarding passes out and available" into our heads for eight plus years now. Please don't give us attitude about this change, make it the positive development that it is. Sell baby, sell.

The only upside to the trip, and my fourth and final evolution, was experiencing the on-board wifi on the flight. I expected a high priced, slow speed, buggy interface to the internet, but was surprised to find a very fast and responsive, easy to obtain connection to the web. Still too expensive for my regular use, especially after the $30 fees for checking luggage, but nice to know it's there if needed.

So in the final analysis, the nickle and dime mentality has made further inroads for the airlines and their brands, the TSA has taken eight years to make minor improvements in the people handling part of their process (but the Disney effect is miles away), and technology takes one step forward and one step back in service of the customer.