TCS solution for British Airways
The Hindu — November 6, 2007

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is building a new software management solution for British Airways to monitor cabin crew. This solution can be made commercially available for other airlines, according to Paul Coby, chief information officer, British Airways.

Addressing a press conference here on Monday at the launch of the TCS Travel and Hospitality Innovation Lab 2.0, Coby said both British Airways and TCS would jointly work on the 'leading edge cabin crew' management solution. It was not about commodity, but working on leading edge system, he added.

The cabin crew management would help the airline monitor its 15,000 plus cabin crew, mostly based at Heathrow and Gatwick, and some in international locations such as Buenos Aires, Delhi and Bahrain.

At present, monitoring was done manually with the use of Microsoft's Excel sheet, while the new solution would automate the entire cabin crew management, said G Raghavan, head, travel and hospitality, TCS.

Coby said that TCS helped British Airways to successfully test the security systems at the Heathrow Airport's Terminal 5, which was to be opened on March 27, 2008.

The £4.3-billion airport terminal would be exclusively used by British Airways and would handle 30 million customers a year, he said.

On Saturday, around 5,00 passengers were asked to do a complete checking, including check-in, security and baggage clearance. There were different vendors for different security, and TCS's software helped in integrating all the vendors. Around 50 employees were working in London and Chennai, said Raghavan.

On the launch of the Innovation Lab, Raghavan said TCS launched its Innovation Lab 2.0 with a new set of solutions designed to help the airline industry identify and retain high value customers.

The earlier Innovation Lab 1.0 offered the solutions for 'touch point,' websites, check-in kiosks.

Now with the new solutions, airlines could launch personalised marketing programmes across channels, including mobile, create real time loyalty programme to influence customer behaviour across customer life cycle and make customer relationship management an integral part of the entire travel experience. These were not possible at present due to information available in 'silos', he said.

S Ramadorai, chief executive officer, TCS, said travel and transportation was emerging as a key vertical for TCS contributing 4.4 per cent of total revenue of $2.7 billion (at the end of six months of the current fiscal).