Continental ordered 34 new Boeing Co. airliners in June, at a cost of $3 billion, plus it's buying an increasing percent of fuel on the futures market. No, it's not making a profit. But, neither is anyone else in today's airline industry. Instead, Continental has its eye on being number one. With a goal of moving from "worst to first," Continental has been implementing upgrades, increasing its routes, keeping prices steady, realizing cost savings, and focusing on customers. And, after all the hard work, it's finally paying off.

The company's strategy is simple: identify and increase the loyalty of Continental's most valuable customers while luring in new, more profitable customers. To get there, Continental relies on its IT department to create automated tools, boost efficiency, sharpen business intelligence, and above all, play a critical role in returning the airline to profitability.

In 2002, Continental began consolidating the airline's disparate CRM systems into one. Then, it partnered with Teradata to create a cross-enterprise data warehouse that is fed by more than 25 enterprise systems; it includes schedules, reservations, customer profiles, demographics, maintenance, payroll, and customer service. Now, the consolidated warehouse provides a 360-degree view of each customer, including 31 million customers who are members of Continental's OnePass or Elite frequent flyer program.

Now, Continental focuses on "CVM - customer value metric." CVM is all about building customer relationships, then cultivating each and every one of them. Continental is signing up new customers for its OnePass program, offering its best CVM customers perks such as access to private lounges, first-in-line boarding, and first-off-the-line baggage handling.

In 2005, none of the big six airlines posted a profit. However, Houston-based Continental, the fourth largest U.S. airline, managed to lose the least money - a mere $68 million net. Not bad, compared to Delta's $3.8 billion loss and Northwest's $2.5 billion loss.