Improved Customer Satisfaction for Airlines Through an End-To-End Cargo Reservation System

Client

The air travel industry is going through a spectacular change due to increasing customer demands and changing economic models. Many airline transportation enterprises are fast realizing the need to keep up with technology upgrades in order to enhance their service and improve customer satisfaction. To achieve this, they are swiftly upgrading their legacy systems to suit the current technology trends.

Here’s how LTM built an end-to-end cargo reservation system for a leading IT solutions provider for the airlines industry.

Challenges

The customer, based out of the Middle East, is a leading IT solutions provider for the airline and transportation industry. They wanted to replace their mainframe based cargo reservation system with an end-to-end cargo reservation system. This had to be an open system that integrates reservations, operations, and revenue management functions. The application platform also had to support analytical functions that included providing revenue earned on a real time basis.

Key challenges, while developing the application, included:

• Designing and building of an automated cargo reservation solution that is  cost effective and easy to configure and use.
• The system had to provide real-time reservations, operations, and   revenue computation.
• Remove paper based processes, while maintaining compliance with IATA’s  e-freight initiative.
• Reduce shipment mishandling instances by streamlining processes and   minimizing reliance on human input.
• Improve cost effectiveness through automation of processes, reduction of  data entry, and increased usage of EDI messaging.
• Provide seamless integration by offering a full range of web services that  facilitate cost effective implementation and customized deployment.
• Create and develop dashboards for real-time monitoring of shipments   and flights.

LTM Solution

The project spanned multiple geographies, bringing together a multi-disciplined team of business analysts, technical architects, developers, and testers.

LTM worked on an iterative waterfall model for all phases of the SDLC. We enabled a seamless and smooth self-service experience for the online customer by translating the customer brand promise to an online application. The application redesign started with a series of user studies. Individual interviews were conducted with existing users of the cargo application spanning numerous locations. The insight gained provided LTM with solid end user use cases upon which the solution was built.

LTM team developed end-to-end requirements and goals related to booking, availability, flight schedule, rates, and communication. This was followed by an in-depth competitive analysis to understand the strengths and weaknesses of competitors and potential competitors.

LTM delivered the next generation cargo reservation solution within the two year duration. The application is one of the largest Java development efforts in recent times, requiring 300 person years of development effort.

Benefits

• Enabled proactive decisions based on real-time, fact-based information.
• Allowed customers to book a year   in advance, while existing systems   permitted only 60 days advance booking.
• Improved the handling of allotment, leading to effective capacity utilizations.
• Ensured seamless integration with systems used by numerous airlines. 
• Offered significant cost savings, as it supported a nearly paperless practice.
• Increased accessibility via multiple channels, such as PDA, rich client,   and web.