The client
The client is the cargo handling division of Airlines Group that uses the freight capacity of its group airlines' passenger flights and maintains three global hubs. It provides freight transportation to more than 350 destinations in over 80 countries.
Business Challenge
The client group carries more than 897,000 tonnes of freight and mail in a year - equivalent to 1680 Kgs loaded every minute. To handle this, a separate cargo support division takes care of all support activities to keep the IT system up and running. Owing to the complex nature of the cargo business, reeling under unprecedented challenges of cost pressures, the client explored various options to implement a new IT Management solution for their cargo operations. Their objective for the transformation was:
- Achieve economic efficiencies
- Performance improvements
- Operational advantages
- The major challenges faced by the client in the cargo areas:
- Legacy technology stack
- Architecture / infrastructure improvements
- Support processes were not streamlined
- Different ITSM tools used in different locations
- Multiple technology stack – Applications in different technologies
Our Solution
The client collaborated with Coforge to enhance all its cargo interfacing systems because of our wealth of experience in Cargo operations and revenue management. Coforge used its deep cargo understanding to redefine the applications across various cargo business areas. An end-to-end project management solution was developed and implemented to streamline the business process and improve the existing infrastructure and architecture. As most of the applications were business-critical, Coforge ensured business continuity, modernized the platform, and digitized processes with a recurring savings of 20% per year in costs.
In this project, Coforge enhanced and streamlined multiple applications that support and maintain cargo operations of the airlines. Most of these applications are business-critical and have to be up and running on a 24*7 basis.
To make the cargo operations more efficient and seamless, we utilized our expertise to integrate multiple products across the various cargo business areas of:
- Booking
- Revenue Management
- Revenue Accounting
- Warehouse Management
- Reporting
- Customs Management
- Pricing
- ULD Management
- Staff Roster Management
- Schedule Management
- Cargo Portal
Coforge was responsible for end-to-end project management, which includes services like technical architect services, business analysis, development, and testing. Through these end-to-end solutions, Coforge enabled the client to streamline the business process and improve the existing infrastructure and architecture. Most of the applications running are critical to the business, which requires 24*7 support and maintenance. Coforge also supported the client with support services such as incident management, problem management, change management, RFS, CSI’s, and supplier management.
Coforge tested, supported, and maintained these integrated products across areas such as revenue management system, warehouse management system, ULD management system, customs management system, and staff roster management system.
Results:
- Implemented CSI’s since 2013 – 86
- Implemented CSI’s in 2018 – 8 with aggregated savings of around 325 MD per year (approx. 60K GBP)
- Increased productivity by faster and seamless development
- Reduction in IT expenses
- Reliability of managing mission-critical applications
- Seamless transitions of complex and challenging applications
- No unplanned outage in any of the systems in the last 12 Months
- More than 50 CSIs completed in the last 2 years covering automation, system, and process improvements resulted in highly optimized performance.
- Multilingual support to cover partner airline cargo
- Supporting more than 80 SL1,2,3 and Generic Applications
Delivering more value
- Coforge has been the preferred supplier for the client for all their delivery projects ever since.
- 10% of IT components Consolidated at the group level
- 25% improvement in bookings via digital platforms (from 5% to 30%)
- Introduced cloud and upgraded from monolith to microservices and SaaS platform
- Recurring savings of 20% per year in support costs
