How Delta Manages Its Technology

Delta Airlines relies on a number of elements of hard and soft technology in its business. Hard technology includes aircraft, materials (baggage) handling facilities, airport facilities and telecommunications technology. Soft technology for Delta includes the scheduling software, which is critical to maximizing uptime for the company's aircraft, and for determining how often the company should fly which routes. Furthermore, pricing algorithms help Delta to achieve the optimal balance between ticket prices and passenger miles flown, all of which contribute to the company's ability to be profitable in a highly-competitive market.

There are also algorithms that help the company to determine how much fuel it should hedge. Much of the critical software that Delta uses is not developed internally, but rather by third parties like Sabre, which makes schedule management software (Sabre, 2015). One critical area of soft technology for Delta is customer service technology. Delta developed this system in-house, as a means of gaining competitive advantage, and the focal point was managing the company's 30 million inbound phone calls per year (Solomon, 2015).

A key feature was speech recognition software that would help customers to navigate through the automated phone system more effectively than would have been possible under prior systems. So this is one area where Delta has been able to develop its own technology and apply it to improving its operations. Delta also relies on third parties at the airports and the relevant air traffic control authorities to help manage the traffic in the skies.

Thus, satellites and radar are critical hard technologies that Delta relies on, even though it is not using those technologies itself. It does make use of communications technologies to deliver things like in-flight entertainment and to ensure that the pilots are in communication at all times. There are several major technology barrier that Delta faces. One of the most important is that there is relatively little competition among producers of the critical technologies used by airlines. Scheduling software is only made by a couple of different companies.

There are only two producers of large aircraft and two others for medium-sized aircraft. All told, Delta is dependent on the ability of the suppliers ot deliver technology, and even then there is little way that Delta can use technology to gain a competitive advantage over its closest rivals. They all have access to the same technologies at the same time. Delta may at different points in time have financial barriers to adding the latest technology, something that could put the company at disadvantage.

Delta does not have a strong technology management strategy. Delta does not plow much money into developing proprietary technology, and as such it has little need for protecting its work in that regard. The company typically adopts third-party technology as such diffuses throughout the industry. There have been, however, examples in the past of Delta seeking greater control over its technology. In 2014, the company acquired one of its third-party technology providers, Travelport LP, as a means of gaining control over critical technology (Carey, 2014).

There are several recommendations that can be made for Delta to improve the way it manages technology. First, there is little to choose from among major airline service offerings, so technology that influences the quality of the.