A CIO from the Asian airlines industry shares his story
By Jack Loo
29 Aug 2008
Last week I wrote about CIOs who have to work in the customer-facing space. I managed to catch up with Tiger Airways CIO, Soh Keng Taan, to explore more in this area.
Soh estimates half of his time is spent on handling IT servicing and infrastructure, while the other is used to handle customer-facing issues.
For Tiger Airways, a huge chunk of its reservation system is based on online booking and Soh is in charge of that. He has to work with the marketing and communications department in a wide variety of areas including customising functions for marketing campaigns or promotions and generally improving the website.
Using business intelligence, Soh is also working closely with the marketing team to research on customer trends from Tiger Airways’ marketing campaigns. This helps the organisation to understand what its passengers want and tailor its offerings as well as services accordingly.
Both Soh and Loo, from YCH, whom I have interviewed last week, are interesting examples of customer-facing CIOs. Looking at a slightly bigger picture, these two CIOs are from regional companies who have to contend with international players. So, I will feature them in more detail in a future CIO Asia feature on how IT helps the regional companies compete with the international big boys.
A staff writer with Fairfax Business Media, Jack Loo is a full-time web and magazine reading addict, from bbc.co.uk to webmonkey and monocle.
