Originally posted by: TelecityGroup

TelecityGroupGerry Luttrell is sitting in the Dublin Airport control centre – a changed place compared to just a few years ago. As he glances around at a bank of CCTV monitors, he can see passengers arriving for check-in on one display, with another showing the nearby approach roads for traffic updates. From here, he can also look at a graphical representation of the airfield and see the individual aircraft moving around, as well as various stands indicating where aircraft are parked.

Having a unified view of business operations from a single hub is a goal many businesses strive to achieve. It’s been made possible because management at Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) have embraced a centralised services and control model. Gerry Luttrell, whose title is Group Head of IT&T/Shared Services, says this has been a template for providing structured, standardised and predictable services to the DAA business functions.

It’s been a critical enabler for a company of the scale of DAA, which employs 3,000 people and turned over €557 million in 2011.

Talking tactics

Luttrell believes that centralised services and control initiatives have been a game changer for the business, and appropriately uses a sporting metaphor to make his point. “It’s a bit like a rugby match. You have a lot of different people looking at different aspects of the game on monitors, reacting and making the required decisions and changes – we do the same, just with CCTV and other ancillary technologies.”

The first centralisation project embarked on by DAA centred on establishing a shared service function (SSC) for finance, human resources and procurement, which has long since been deployed and shared out to every part of the company.

To view this post in its entirety, please visit the TelecityGroup website at http://www.telecitygroup.ie/welcometodublin/aming-sky-high.htm