DESIGNING UNIFIED PLATFORM TO BRING TOGETHER CUSTOMER JOURNEY DATA FOR IMPROVED DECISION MAKING

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BUSINESS CHALLENGE

We analyzed the issues with the current data solutions

Airlines' daily operations are fueled with data from various functions (Reservation, Ticketing, Departure Control and Loyalty), leading to multiple data sources (GDS, OTA, Travel suppliers, Codeshare/Interline Partners, ATO/CTO office, Airport Ticket/Check-in counters and Loyalty Management systems). Some of the common challenges faced by airlines due to this include –

The internal repositories often operate in siloed fashion, resulting in lack of unified view of customer journey
Due to the rigid schemas and tight coupling with the core passenger systems, the Operational Data Store (ODS) significantly increases the implementation timeline, with every new data domain added to the platform
The analytics engine is not in sync with the ODS, thus defeating the purpose of real-time data analysis
The cluster contention and lack of scalability in the applications degrades the performance of technology solution
The cost to build and maintain an integrated data platform is exponential, and often does not justify the ROI

The drawbacks of existing airlines data solutions have come to the fore during the current pandemic, drastically resulting in huge ramp-down in airlines business operations.

THE SOLUTION

Mphasis Airline Data Platform: Unified, serverless, scalable, loosely coupled, and cost-effective

Mphasis brings together multiple decades of airline industry knowledge and deep expertise in Cloud and Cognitive to create a data platform that serves Operational Data Stores for PNRs, Tickets, Loyalty etc. data to support digital channel and Big Data & Analytics platforms for bringing together all airline data to support current analytics and reporting needs.

The platform uses open standards, purpose-built databases & serverless architecture, following well-architected best practices, AWS recommended architecture, and built with AWS native services. The solution separates storage from compute, create a simplified Change Data Capture (CDC) pipeline for record-level data updates, delivers microservices using serverless tech stack and event driven actions.

Data analysis and data visualization through various AWS services incorporates standard AI/ML models based on client use cases. Generating test data for customer journey in the OTA format. Various data models available out of the box based on IATA One Order services. Various prebuilt accelerators to save infrastructure cost and some custom data handling cost.

In a nutshell, the data platform facilitates:

Data Ingestion: Allows for data to be accepted in different formats and delivery channels with fewer restrictions on specific formats/layouts and data elements. The design principles coalesce (combine) both operational and analytical needs whereby the same data feeds populate both the data lake and operational data store
Data Processing & Transformation: Add new ways of data enrichment that will add greater value to the data
Data Delivery: Add new ways of delivering data to the client’s systems (Data Lake access sharing, API connectivity) all in a controlled way with the Airline admins having the option to manage each delivery channel directly
Data Security: Single sign-on, data sharing rule / role-based access, and PII data identification & tagging

Our solution helps:

Business understand and use data most effectively and efficiently to understand Trends, behavior, Performance, prediction, and planning
Business to have right level of access to data through data democratization
Business to perform actions on demand basis and have full control over the cost of operation
Business to custom build services as needed with very minimum effort
Business applications would be served with operational data with millisecond response time and have single source of truth
Business has flexibility to bring in any data domains not limited to Passenger, Flight and Loyalty etc.

THE OUTCOME

Three measurable results and multiple benefits achieved

Average infrastructure cost savings up to 60% annually

Average IT resource cost savings up to 50% annually

Business outcomes delivered within 2-3 weeks after a new information request comes in

Faster deployment within 6 to 8 weeks of integration lead time

System uptime increased from 99.90% to 99.97%, limiting the downtime to only 50 minutes in a year

There are several other benefits including faster time-to-market, reusability of the code, among others that can be seen with Mphasis Airline Data Platform.