INDUSTRY WATCH
THE USE OF THE SV
INSIGHT PLATFORM
HAS CHANGED THE
INFORMATION CULTURE
WITHIN THE AIRLINE
AND PROMOTED AN
OPEN COMMUNICATION
BASED SHARED
CORPORATE METRICS
What would you say are
the specific business results
generated by the project?
With the use of SV Insight platform, the airline
has anticipated operational cost savings
and improved efficiency. The increased
access to high quality data and information
consolidated across several complex source
systems has improved operational functions,
such as maintenance and fuel management
and has increased Saudi Airline’s overall
efficiencies globally, by up to 2%.
To put it on a scale, when you are spending
$270 million on maintenance annually,
2–3% translates into huge savings. The
same would go for fuel, crew utilisation, and
how you schedule your flights, and so on
and so forth. That translates into savings of
hundreds of millions that we can now take
and invest back into the airline to improve
our products and services and therefore
expand our market.
SV insight platform with its up-to-date
information has enabled the airline to
phase out three main legacy mainframe
systems, realising a cost saving from
both an IT operation and business
side. For example phasing out the
legacy statistical system saves IT the
mainframe operational costs, as well as
saving five full-time business employees
maintaining record updates. Additionally,
this contributes towards the IT initiative
of shutting down the mainframe system,
which can save the airline $13.4 million.
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INTELLIGENTCIO
How other added benefits
would you say have arisen
with the introduction of such
technologically driven changes
to the airline’s operations?
The use of the SV Insight platform
has changed the information culture
within the airline and promoted an
open communication based shared
corporate metrics. Prior to SV Insight
implementation, many business areas
created their own analyses using their
own data, and therefore had their own,
individual perspective and interpretation
of that part of the operation. Now, most
business areas are sharing correlated
information and can make decisions
based on a consistent point of reference
across the organisation.
Changes have also provided better
customer experience and helped avoid
fraud. The SV Insight platform combines
operational and customer data from various
systems onto one unified platform. This
enables the airline to create rules specific to
their business processes and use them to
personalise the customer experience.
With a detailed view of travel agencies
activities, the airline can make better deals
with travel agencies, airline’s partnership
and alliances. Additionally, the airline
can track agencies discrepancies and
violations, as well other violations such as
illegal use frequent fliers mileage from nonfrequent flier members.
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