Qantas restructures IT team

Qantas will this week make its final appointments in a major restructure that could see up to 100 of its IT staff in new roles.

Since April, the airline has moved to reduce technical IT operations jobs in favour of commercial procurement and supplier management roles.

Chief information officer Paul Jones told iTnews that Qantas’ IT headcount would remain stable at 250, but 100 roles would be “fundamentally” changed.

“Qantas has been through a number of years of significant outsourcing events,” Jones said.

“The skills and types of roles that we need have shifted over that time.”

Jones said Qantas had come to rely on outsourcers for 80 percent of its IT, including Amadeus for passenger management software, IBM for IT infrastructure, TCS and Mahindra Satyam for application management, and Fujitsu for end-user computing.

He said the airline had identified a need to “reset the [IT] organisation”, to improve its delivery of end-to-end services, and put an end to "shadow IT", where staff were "duplicating what suppliers were contracted to do".

As of August 1, Qantas' IT staff will be split into four "business engagement centres", aligned with the airline's domestic, international, loyalty and corporate divisions.

Eight "centres of excellence" sit behind the centres: architecture, integration, service management, business change, data and voice networking, business intelligence and data warehousing, end-use computing and mobility, and platform hosting.

Qantas will also double the size of its technology procurement and supplier management team, with a number of contracts up for renewal in the next two years.

The new strategy was developed after a 72-person offsite meeting in April, involving Gartner and PricewaterhouseCoopers analysts, service providers, and staff across the Qantas organisation.

Business engagement centre leaders were appointed last month, each reporting to Jones as well as a relevant business executive.

Sources told iTnews that a large number of Qantas IT staff were advised a few weeks ago to apply for new jobs if they wanted to remain with the airline.

Jones said the airline was in the process of interviewing candidates, and was likely to make its remaining appointments by Friday.

As such, he was unable to say how many workers would be made redundant as a result of the restructure.

For the six months to December 31 last year, Qantas recorded a half-year profit of $202 million — down $215 million from the previous year.

Jones said the airline aimed to cut costs by 30 percent, noting that it had already saved $30 million by improving IT management, partner management and reducing communication costs.