Over the holidays you might have heard of the disaster Southwest encountered when they canceled over 62% of their flights days before Christmas. While Southwest is going to be recovering from lost customer trust and refunding costs for disappointed travelers for the imminent future, this can also be a learning experience for other businesses.
You can’t outrun technology.
While there were some logistical issues with weather (that other airlines dealt with fine), overall the vast majority of Southwest’s issues revolved around their “IT and infrastructure” that hadn’t changed since the 1990s. Southwest’s Chief Executive, and now President as of 2023, Bob Jordan, stated in November to Forbes “as we’ve grown, we’ve outrun our tools”.
Mr. Jordan was discussing their technology and tool issues a month before the most recent mass Southwest failure, so why did they not address it sooner? For most technology adaptations, there can be fear of change that persists as well as thinking “we don’t have the time right now”, but I bet Southwest wishes they would’ve made time for technology updates now. The damages to their brand will be hard to unwind and will cost the company millions of dollars.
This is why it’s better to be in front of the issues, even though it may be uncharted territory for your company. After looking at the effects of the Southwest problems, it proves that there is no company too small or large that can outrun technology updates. So, make it your business’s new year's resolution — make time for improvements of outdated processes and technology improvements.
It has never been easier to do so with Singe Payables, a payment processing company that is here to automate your Accounts Payables. How much wasted space, paper, and time does your AP team spend with tedious and manual processes? No more having to file away invoices and copies of checks with the advantage of having copies of everything stored virtually. Checks are a thing of the past and businesses are missing out on financial gain that virtual cards provide and ACH provide.
Haven’t heard of integrated payables for your AP department? The largest of companies utilize this to pay off vendor invoices in a quicker and more secure manner. Accelerate your cash flow today for free and talk to a Singe Payables team member here.
If you want more information on the Southwest Airlines meltdown, the NYT wrote an article covering it here.
Comments