NIIT Technologies White Paper

Transcription

1 In-flight Customer Experience NIIT Technologies White Paper

2 CONTENTS Introduction 3 Need of the Hour: Technology in In-flight Catering 3 Conclusion 4

3 TOUR LOGISTICS JOURNEY LOGISTICS PACKAGING JOURNEY Introduction The Millennial traveler is better informed and spoilt for choice! While this brings a whole new set of challenges, it also presents novel opportunities for the travel industry. In order to outperform competitors, airlines need to seek new differentiators or ways to improve brand awareness. Customer Experience has taken center stage and every touch point of the customer lifecycle is an opportunity to enhance customer experience and increase brand engagement. A significant part of that experience is in-flight where there is a captive audience to make a positive impression. Airlines have introduced several new products and services to enhance operational efficiencies and customer experience over the years. Today, in-flight catering has become a key service offered by full service carriers while low cost carriers/hybrid airlines have turned it into a major source of ancillary revenue. Serving meals to passengers may appear fairly straightforward to most, but it involves clockwork precision and coordination between the airline team and multiple external partners. As per IATA, 2-3% of the airlines operational spend is on in-flight catering, which is supported by flight kitchens spread globally, serving millions of meals every day. Aggressive growth plans of airlines and increasing cost pressures require a highly optimized process to manage smooth in-flight catering. This paper outlines what is required to succeed with passengers. It also discusses in short a solution that can help address the key pain points in the in-flight catering process. Need of the Hour: Technology in In-flight Catering The in-flight catering services market is expected to reach at a value of US $16.5 billion by 2018 (Report: companiesandmarkets.com). With emerging technology and huge competition between the airline companies, passengers associate quality of catering services with better flight experience. Recycled and light weight food packages are used by airlines to reduce the overall cost and establish an enhanced brand experience. The in-flight catering industry is growing at a moderate rate with emphasis on customers and their needs, menus, shelf life of the cooked food and transportation. Transportation involves moving packaged meals from the production unit to the aircraft, uploading and storing it on-board. Technological advancements can help ease the entire inflight catering process. IT management systems and inventory management systems are few of the tools that are available today. These tools help make processes and systems efficient. Process Planning The process of serving meals 30,000 feet in the air starts well in advance with airlines setting up complex contracts for food and equipment with other suppliers. Whilst the airlines work on how to serve thousands of passengers flying every day across time zones to different destinations, kitchens are equally challenged by the need to innovate meals for their clients. The equipment manufacturer s constant endeavor is to optimize the supply chain starting from kitchen equipment, aircraft galleys, trolleys and trays all the way to cutlery in order to create a unique passenger experience. The complexities are multiplied with different aircraft types flying on different sectors with different galley configurations and loads. Adding to these complexities are numerous meal types or preferences offered across different regions. 3

4 With increasing pressure to optimize cost, lean teams within the airline are tasked with the responsibility of handling the entire planning process from vendor selection to designing complex customized service offerings on a flight-to-flight basis. It is critically important to get this step right in order to ensure that the rest of the process runs smoothly and the airline delivers an enhanced onboard customer experience. While some carriers manage the process manually, others leverage technology in the shape of complex ERP, legacy systems or custom solutions. The challenge is to find the right technology solution that is comprehensive yet flexible enough to handle the end-to-end complexities of the evolving business process. Lack of the right tools to aid team s decision-making process often leads to human error, extra costs and eventually, an unsatisfactory customer experience that could do irreparable damage to the airline s brand. Meal Planning Like most business processes, in-flight catering also requires granular information which is the building block for success. Dealing with multiple customized product offerings, special meals and preferences requires visibility at the ingredient level for each menu item. Based on passenger numbers and food items accompanied by equipment, beverages and dry items are clubbed together to form a meal tray. These are calculated and stored scientifically in different trolleys that are checked, loaded and signed off for billing before departure. When dealing with a large number of passengers, it becomes a challenging task to track and maintain details on a flight-to-flight basis without the aid of technology. This often leads to human error in the form of incorrect meal quantities being uplifted, mishandling of last minute orders and incorrect invoicing by suppliers/vendors which adds to the effort of each resource involved in the process. It gets even more challenging in situations of irregular operations i.e. delays, cancellations and last minute aircraft changes. The impact on the entire process due to irregular operations is even more drastic and cost prohibitive. Due to the nature of its operation, in-flight catering demands dynamic flow of information between departments, this adds to the complexities of collaboration. Getting it right manually every time without defects or leakages is next to impossible while operating in a complex and time-bound environment where accuracy of the highest degree is a must. In-flight Experience Once the meal is on board and in the air, it comes down to the final test. The cabin crew is trained to utilize every minute operating out of limited spaces whilst trying to deliver a unique brand experience to each passenger. A new dimension is added to their service if they have instant access to relevant information at their fingertips via smart devices - whether it s access to galley plans for meal quantities and their storage location or knowing passenger preferences without having to ask. With the use of in-flight devices the customer experience is enhanced whereby the cabin crew is no longer serving seat 12A with a AVML (Asian Hindu Vegetarian Meal), but referring to the passenger by name and describing the meal options with details such as calories, ingredients and a reference image of what s going to be served. The passenger interaction does not end at the destination as passengers carry the travel experience with them and are most likely to share it via different mediums, acting as brand ambassadors for the airline. The capturing and tracking of in-flight meal related feedback generated onboard or post the journey to closure is highly important to ensure that passengers return to the airline or even better, share their positive experience with others. Conclusion Managing in-flight catering processes manually can only be possible up to a certain size/scale beyond which technology has a key role to play. Accurate ordering can help reduce potential losses caused by incorrect procurement, meal wastage and fuel burn to create a viable and competitive business model. In-flight catering is a time-bound process that requires efficient management and control of operations including lean manufacturing, budgetary control and just-in-time production. Technology should ensure visibility and sharing of information amongst multiple internal and external stakeholders. Additionally, it should enable actionable analytics based on available data to improve this business process further. Every airline and flight kitchen follows a different process and as such should choose a solution that can be tailored to their needs. Teams can no longer work in silos hence it is highly critical for the solution to enable collaboration, be flexible for integration with existing systems and at the same time incorporate new functionality based on evolving business needs. 4

5 About NIIT Technologies NIIT Technologies is a leading IT solutions organization, servicing customers in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. It offers services in Application Development and Maintenance, Enterprise Solutions including Managed Services and Business Process Outsourcing to organizations in the Financial Services, Travel & Transportation, Manufacturing/Distribution, and Government sectors. With employees over 8,000+ professionals, NIIT Technologies follows global standards of software development processes. Over the years the Company has forged extremely rewarding relationships with global majors, a testimony to mutual commitment and its ability to retain marquee clients, drawing repeat business from them. NIIT Technologies has been able to scale its interactions with marquee clients in the BFSI sector, the Travel Transport & Logistics and Manufacturing & Distribution, into extremely meaningful, multi-year "collaborations. NIIT Technologies follows global standards of development, which include ISO 9001:2000 Certification, assessment at Level 5 for SEI-CMMi version 1.2 and ISO information security management certification. Its data center operations are assessed at the international ISO IT management standards. India NIIT Technologies Ltd. Corporate Heights (Tapasya) Plot No. 5, EFGH, Sector 126 Noida-Greater Noida Expressway Noida , U.P., India Ph: Fax: Americas NIIT Technologies Inc., 1050 Crown Pointe Parkway 5 th Floor, Atlanta, GA 30338, USA Ph: Toll Free: NIIT Fax: Europe NIIT Technologies Limited 2 nd Floor, 47 Mark Lane London - EC3R 7QQ, U.K. Ph: Fax: Singapore NIIT Technologies Pte. Limited 31 Kaki Bukit Road 3 #05-13 Techlink Singapore Ph: Fax: A leading IT solutions organization 21 locations and 16 countries professionals Level 5 of SEI-CMMi, ver1.2 ISO certified Level 5 of People CMM Framework Write to us at [email protected] D_78_191114