South African Airways

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South African Airways

Because of their long-standing relationship and our intimate knowledge of SAA’s operations, Fujitsu was selected to develop a completely new software suite for the customer.

The Organisation

South African Airways is Africa’s leading airline serving more than 700 destinations throughout the world carrying more than 6.5 million passengers each year to 34 cities in 26 countries on 6 continents, employing close to 11, 000 people worldwide.

The Challenge

The challenges faced by SAA were challenges being faced by many airlines throughout the world, the organisation needed to procure and implement a technology solution in order to over come some major business issues.

Have you ever considered the intricacies behind the scenes when you board a flight? The airline business is an incredibly complex industry that relies on numerous factors meshing together smoothly in order to get you to your destination safely, timeously and feeling pampered.

The Operations division within SAA had an assignment to improve their reporting standard to ensure they continue to deliver award winning service to their customers.

SAA Operations manages the intricacies of aircraft operations and crew scheduling whilst adhering to all the legal requirements of a stringently regulated industry, for SAA’s 39 Boeings; 18 Airbuses, 800 Flight Deck Crew and 2350 cabin Crew, out of a total employee base of 11,000 people. This requires an immediate knowledge of any anomaly in the operation.

The solution needed to also further benefit the organisation by decreasing the demands on technical resources, constantly being asked for revised reports, empowering the users to draw their own reports, therefore becoming self sufficient. “We did not have access to all the data residing on our many different applications and databases. We had different people doing different types of analysis, and we were getting conflicting results. We knew we would have a Quick Win by implementing Fujitsu’s Business Intelligence Solution.”

The Solution

In partnership with Fujitsu, SAA developed an adhoc query and analysis system; for the Operations division to carry out performance monitoring, scheduling, and business analysis from their Aircraft and Crew Scheduling system, also developed and implemented by Fujitsu in South Africa, over 300 relationally linked tables resided in this systems databases; business intelligence was able to access this data much easier and faster than any other prominent product SAA had tested. They were able to get a full view of their data world for the first time.

The solution enabled rapid development of reports and gave far more functionality and business benefits than SAA had envisaged. After the first month most of the 50 odd major report requirements were completed and posted to the Intranet for the users. A further 44 reports were developed over the next few months. The reports were designed to allow the users to make full use of parameterised reporting, whilst being controlled by stringent user group security.

The solution allowed users’ the ability to create their own reports, almost completely freeing up the full time Statistical Analysts from day to day report requests, allowing them to focus on data mining for new trends and projects of strategic value. incorporate electronic report delivery and management into the Enterprise Business Intelligence system. The scheduling and distribution engine gives SAA the ability to send reports on a scheduled basis or when certain business conditions trigger alerts giving exceptional control over when reports are run and how they are distributed. The content, timing, frequency, format, and even the method of distributing reports can all be easily managed and customised to meet individual needs.

Prior to implementation the Aircraft Operations department was required to distribute a weekly 15 page report to 30 managers (some 23,400 pages annually). The department would start faxing the reports at 5h00. If there was a problem in getting the faxed report out, it had a direct impact on the Operational meeting; Business Intelligence obviated this cumbersome task immediately and has taken SAA's Operational reporting to new levels of efficiency.

The Benefits

SAA now have an Enterprise wide reporting solution with access to strategic data throughout the organisation. Cost savings and productivity efficiencies have been achieved in a variety of business areas. Strategic projects that were never previously considered have been initiated.

SAA now have access to all the data residing on their many different applications and databases. Previously different people had undertaken different types of analysis resulting in conflicting results. The Fujitsu Business Intelligence solution has ensured consistency throughout the organisation.

Being able to link to data held in multiple applications and databases substantially broadened the value of reports delivered to their operational staff.

Users fully understand all of the information available to them, they are now empowered to access this information themselves which in turn has decreased all the demands on SAA’s technical resources for revised reports, the users are now truly self sufficient.

Having empowered the users to obtain their own reports, this was followed by automating the distribution of various standard reports, in the distribution of Flight Operations schedules alone, Business Intelligence has proved itself a remarkable solution. It made sense to incorporate electronic report delivery and management into the Enterprise Business Intelligence system. The scheduling and distribution engine gives SAA the ability to send reports on a scheduled basis or when certain business conditions trigger alerts giving exceptional control over when reports are run and how they are distributed. The content, timing, frequency, format, and even the method of distributing reports can all be easily managed and customised to meet individual needs.

Prior to implementation the Aircraft Operations department was required to distribute a weekly 15 page report to 30 managers (some 23,400 pages annually). The department would start faxing the reports at 5h00. If there was a problem in getting the faxed report out, it had a direct impact on the Operational meeting; Business Intelligence obviated this cumbersome task immediately and has taken SAA's Operational reporting to new levels of efficiency.

Fujitsu Services

Fujitsu Services is one of the leading IT services companies in Europe, Middle East and Africa. It has an annual turnover of £1.99 billion, (€2.86 billion) employs 15,200 people and operates in over 20 countries. It designs, builds and operates IT systems and services for customers in the financial services, telecom, retail, utilities and government markets. Its core strength is the delivery of IT infrastructure management and outsourcing across desktop, networking and data centre environments, together with a full range of related services, from infrastructure consulting through integration and deployment.

Headquartered in London, Fujitsu Services is the European-centred IT services arm of the Fujitsu Group. The Fujitsu Group is a US$44.5 billion (€34 billion) leader in the provision of IT systems and services for the global marketplace.