April 1997

iTM Erases Delta Airline e-commerce Black Eye

Seven months ago Delta Air Line realized it had a winner in its Escape and Senior loyalty marketing programs.  Designed to provide super cheap fares and last minute offers to exotic locations, the program was exceeding all revenue and traffic expectations. 

Then, potential disaster struck.  Just two months before adding a new College loyalty program trouble reared its head.  Complaints uncovered major flaws in the software that led to severe data corruption and billing problems. The teams were overwhelmed by the magnitude of the problems.

iTM's President, Wayne Mackert, was asked to step into the fray and turnaround the situation for Delta.  This included becoming the middle man between the five companies involved and his task was to mediate / facilitate / investigate / remediate the problems while ensuring that the new program would roll-out cleanly.   

Over the past seven months iTM's founder led an on-site team at their direct marketing partner location to find, fix, and remediate all issues including fixing the overall processes to ensure future quality.  iTM was also tasked with assisting the Delta executives with preparing a long-term strategy for these very successful tactical initiatives in e-commerce.

Quite a mix of tasks: operational, tactical, and strategic.  Using a mixture of hands-on leadership, mentoring, and facilitation skills, iTM's team quickly moved from triage, to surgery, to recovery phases.  For example, iTM held daily mentoring sessions with the development executives to address process issues.  iTM's facilitation led daily phone calls and meetings with the various executive teams working  in each company.  iTM's objective was to achieve Delta's goals everyday.  Where and when it was necessary, the shirtsleeves were rolled-up and iTM's staff reviewed code, testing results, and data changes with the aim of finding process flaws--and fixing them.  The end result--a system running on all cylinders and future technology pathway established.