IT assignment on: Technologies in Singapore airlines

Introduction: Background of Singapore Airlines

Singapore Airlines (SIA) was found in the year 1947 where it was previously known as the Malayan and was renamed later to the Malayan Airlines. It was in the year 1965 that the airline got separated from the Singapore government and became an individual entity. Eventually it was named as the Singapore Airlines by the year 1972. Being restricted to a small country it hardly had any domestic routes to fly which made it compete with the international players from the start. The initial days where tough for the company, where it had to get approval from many other countries to get international route access as well as the access to airports in different sections of the world.

Singapore Airlines today ranks among the most popular International Airlines and has made a great name for it. The corporate mission and Vision as stated by the company is as follows: (SIA Annual Report 2011-12) 

Mission

“Singapore Airlines has a responsibility not only to be an excellent company, but also to be an excellent citizen of the world by enhancing the lives of the people we touch. With that aim in mind, we have made many commitments to the arts and education, to our communities, and the health and welfare of our country’s citizens, and those in countries we fly to. With this goal in mind, we’ve also made a strong commitment to preserving the environment – and our world for future generations.”

 Vision

 “We are a global company dedicated to providing air transportation services of the highest quality and to earning good returns to shareholder.” 

Website:http://www.singaporeair.com/

Today they fly one of the youngest fleet of aircrafts to 6 continents throughout the world. The brand is recognized through the image of the Singapore Girl where it provides some of the highest standard services.

As stated on the website some of the few things which the company is well known for being the 1^st to:

• Offer free headsets, free drinks and a choice of meals in its Economy Class
• Introduce the satellite based inflight telephones
• Involve in comprehensive panel of world renowned chefs, the International Culinary
• Offer audio and video on demand capabilities on the Kris World
• To operate world’s longest nonstop commercial flight to Los Angeles

Corporate Structure and Business Strategy

The current chairman of the Singapore Airlines is Stephen Lee Ching Yen who had been appointed in the year 2004. The CEO and director of the company is GohChoonPhong whereby the company has another 7 independent directors in the governing body. The airline is the subsidiary of Singapore government investment and holding company Temasek Holdings that holds a 54.5% stake in the company.  SIA is not only involved in the passenger aircraft business but also has diversified businesses in the related industries. It includes aircraft leasing, tour operations, air catering, aviation engineering, and ground handling. Presently the company has restructured itself where it comprises of more than 25 subsidiaries, 32 associates, along with 2 JVs (Singpore Air 2012).

Speaking about the crew members it has a good ratio of male and female stewards. Moreover it’s the branding strategy of the Singapore Girls which has made the company more popular over the years and has been the face of the company. Singapore Girl strategy has virtually been a powerful idea that has made the brand successful where SIA has eloped the mythical aura and status around the girl (Snippapers 2011).

The company has been well known for providing rigorous as well as comprehensive training programs to its employees. It has actually ensured the company to maintain high level of services over the years.

Singapore Airlines is also known for its most rigorous and comprehensive training that it imparts to its cabin and crew members. This has ensured to make the brand to deliver what it has been able to make its image over the years of its operations.(Infrastructure 2012)

IT Infrastructure within the Singapore Airlines

SIA has been awarded to be the most innovative carrier where they have revolutionized the management of the passenger service by using the next generation customer management platform. The platform is provided by Amadeus which is a leading technology as well as distribution partner in the travel industry. The decision to use Amadeus was taken by the management only after a detailed evaluation which involved exhaustive study of the Amadeus Altea Customer Management Solution. The services by Amadeus include every part of the company’s operations right from its sales to reservations along with managing the global inventory as well as departure control operations (typepad 2012).

At the time when the new technology provider was being selected the Executive Vice President for Marketing and the Regions for Singapore Airlines, Huang Cheng Eng, had quoted: “Singapore Airlines prides itself on its single-minded focus on commitment to its customers. We believe that the Altéa CMS, with its proven and scalable infrastructure, will help us to maintain and enhance our position as an industry leader in customer service, well into the foreseeable future” (Amadeus 2008).

After the decision to select Altea CMS the company had an added assurance as the travel partner came with a vast experience for migrating from the age old applications to the latest platforms and the advanced technologies for enhanced customer experience. This in a way made it simpler for the management of the company as Amedeus with its experience took care of the diverse day to day operations for the airline.

The Executive Vice President, David V. Jones, had also quoted that:   “Singapore Airlines’ decision is further recognition and validation of the key concepts behind Altéa CMS. That is, a proven, future-proof platform, that is built around the customer and offers unmatched deployed functionality, which allows airlines to configure the system to deliver truly differentiated service. Singapore’s choice of Altéa underlines our expertise in providing airlines with world-class IT solutions”(Amadeus 2012).

Management Issues at Singapore Airlines

Singapore Airlines being a big brand today, the chance of any conflict in terms of security and service to arise seems quite a distant away. From the initial days only the management had adopted fully branded product and service differential strategy. The riders of its smooth service over the years are:

• Innovation
• Genuine Quality
• Excellent customer Service
• Advanced Technology

However, the above have been helping the company grow manifolds over the years; the company had faced several issues and challenges too. The established corporate structure and leadership had been the key to solve every issue that came midway. Its management had been indulging in clear corporate governance initiatives which actually possess an outstanding ability for coping up with any uncertainty, a better control in the financial as well as the physical resources, and more importantly position the information network.

The company has been successful based on the distinctive capabilities which have been implemented throughout the years of its business cycle. The future seems to be bright with SIA implementing newer technologies andlaying a stress on its core competencies. Customer service expectations that are evident to grow could only be achieved by laying stress on customer welfare, and reinforcing the consumer feedback system.

As customer feedback and complaints along with the problems that customers face is very important to know, the company needs to take the right measures to collect them and store for further processing.

Cloud Computing in the Aviation Industry

 As internet has revolutionized almost every sector of businesses across the world, aviation industry has not been far behind. It has actually generated tremendous value which has resulted in higher growth, reduced operational expenses, and become a customer centric as well as globally distributed ticketing system. Singapore Airlines like the other major players across the world are facing numerous challenges which include:

• Rising low cost carriers
• Increased Fuel Prices and affecting the margins
• Increase in the competition as a result of easy access to comparative pricing

With cloud computing coming into the picture it would be a technical introduction that would help Singapore Airlines to face all the challenges that come in their way. Implementing the cloud computing technology brings in the potential for simplifying as well as accelerating the business processes and hence contributes to the growth generation for the company. Moreover it further facilitates in business intelligence systems and result in reduction of costs drastically.

Strategy for SIA to implement Cloud Computing

Implementing the Cloud Computing technology the company could benefit in a larger manner. Some of the benefits have been discussed below:

• Contribute in Real time analytics and Business Intelligence: For SIA the planning as well as the operational process is highly integrated to various systems which comprises of the Reservation and Revenue Management, Operations Control, Crew Management, etc. The company can constantly examine the traffic data with the previous load factors and the demand forecast figures only through real time analytics. It also needs to analyse and predict the traffic and facilitate the operational discrepancies which could result due to delays, bad weather conditions or any unavoidable circumstances by the use of in-depth business intelligence.  With Cloud Computing being implemented SIA could have a larger platform to access data easily for real time analysis at times of any disruptive events (t-systems 2012).
• Enhance Customer Experience: For Singapore Airlines to sustain and improve customer experience one of the most important things to take care of is consistency in terms of providing reliable performance for the customers facing IT systems, particularly for the check in counters. It is not only SIA that faces challenges for providing optimum performance over the WAN networks just because of the bandwidth constraints. Another factor responsible to this is the latency underlying the IT backbone. However if the company tries the cloud computing technology, its ubiquitous nature could help in providing a much nearer end user experience. This would mean that the performance levels would not be constrained by the bandwidth to handle the delays or the prolonged operations. It would thus assist in retaining customers and hence making them satisfied with the services.
• Facilitating Cost Reduction and focussing on the core issues: When SIA utilizes the cloud computing technology it will allow the airline to focus on the core business issues. The reason for this is pretty simple. The costs to invest in next generation IT infrastructure which are popularly referred to as the data centers would considerably be reduced. It has been seen that most of the airlines receive reservations, departure control, and inventory, along with several other software services which are provided by the third parties.Cloud Computing results in lower per unit costs, simpler operations management and establishing economies of scale. For example the cloud based reservation platforms which are offered in the SAS like the SITA have already become popular for many of the larger players in the airline industry.
• Addressing Security Concerns: Last but the most important aspect that could witness a change is the security for the customer data. The Cloud Computing Technology has developed drastically over the years where it has now become mature enough for securing and handling critical data with its Tier 3 data centers.  These data centers come coupled with regulations and frameworks like the ISO-27002, Sarbanes-Oxely and COBIT. Further it would surely make the process of incident investigation much easier and lead to a faster recovery and consumer response times.

Therefore with so many advantages it really becomes an important element which when implemented could help the company in a great deal. Already the airline industry seems to be at the inflection point and with cloud computing coming in would bring in hosts of benefits. In order to implement this in SIA the management needs to ensure that proper assessment of the entire IT infrastructure within the organization is carried out. The sole reason for this would be that adopting the Cloud computing not only has a change to the IT section of the company but also to all the linked areas. Thus it is recommended that they should be implemented but the company should create a strategy in accordance with the business strategy they have. This would systematically leverage the cloud computing capabilities and deliver much better results (Teradata 2011).

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