Managing the Baggage of Expectations with a Live Enterprise

Consider these numbers:

• 99% of the fares published in the market across 420+ global airlines are processed by Infosys
• A leading North American airline checks and moves 200 Mn bags annually, with Infosys
• And, the experience of 150 million passengers is being reshaped by Infosys

Today, airline passengers increasingly expect a touchless, personalized experience from airlines. They expect service providers to understand and respond to their demands in real-time, and with an almost intuitive sense. In other words, they expect airlines to be Live Enterprises.

Last year, Infosys set out to transform itself and its clients into Live Enterprises – organizations that can sense, understand, and respond to changes in the market in real-time. At its core, a Live Enterprise is orchestrated to help large, complex companies gain a start-up like agility of response to dynamic market needs and a velocity of innovation to match.

As airlines increasingly adopt interactive, real-time technologies and incisive analytics, they are, in many ways embracing the tenets of a Live Enterprise. Incumbents have historically struggled to predictably recognize potentially game-changing market stimuli when they are in the middle of it. This means they are constrained in their ability to spot the new things that might find favor with their customers and to respond boldly with new business models and choices. The aspiration to nurture start-up-like responsiveness, increase the velocity of innovation, and build new digital-powered business models is ubiquitous but rarely fully achieved. In fact, in a global survey of 1,000 business leaders spearheading digital transformation, by Infosys Knowledge Institute (IKI), more than half of the respondents (56%) said they worry about their lack of capacity for rapid experimentation and figuring out what innovations might hold the most promise for their customers.

A necessary element for earning a traveler’s trust and ongoing business is the capability to predict customer events rather than react to them. This is the kind of intuitive ability that Live Enterprises demonstrate that will help airlines remain essential, stay competitive, and build loyalty among customers.

Baggage, for example, is a complex process that is supported by legacy systems and one that has a negative impact on customers when it fails. The implementation of such a new system, for one of our clients, was no simple task. Our client -- one of the world’s largest airlines -- had to implement the new system at every airport. It took over a year to write the new app and two years to roll it out and replace the devices in the field. The airline is in a period of transformation with other major projects, including cloud enablement of the baggage platform. With so many disparate systems, many new applications, and many legacy applications, integration of data was an enormous challenge to the company’s operations. Infosys is working with its client on building on and improving the baggage system, which has become a critical part of the airline’s operations. The airline’s next steps are to get even more predictive and to improve on the mishandled baggage analytics already in place.

Ultimately, we want to get into predictive mishandling based on history; using tools that can predict mishandling events, such as tight connection times, will enable the airline to focus resources and attention on high-risk situations. Data analysis of this type is central to things that the business can achieve, like arming employees with a lot more information so they can do their jobs better. For example, tools similar to facial recognition can recognize moving baggage and detect and alert staff to anomalies like the presence of a dangerous good (e.g., a wheelchair battery or dry ice) or let handlers know pets are traveling. The airline is also working to increase the sophistication of its notification systems. For example, it doesn’t want a passenger waiting at the carousel when the system knows their bag is not there, exacerbating an already frustrating customer experience. Notifications can also bring good news such as a notification that a bag made it on an earlier flight and is waiting for the passenger.

The crux is getting the most relevant and helpful information to both employees and customers at the right time, like a Live Enterprise would, as it Navigates its Next.

You can read the complete HFS case study here.