Scandinavian Airlines deploys analytics platform to improve customer experience, logistics and revenues

Scandinavian Airlines flies more than 30 million passengers a year to some 120 destinations. In doing so, the airline generates copious amounts of data — data that could have tremendous value for the business. So, when SAS set out on its digital transformation journey, it knew the effort would have to involve a strong analytics platform. It was just a question of how to get there.

To attract Scandinavia’s frequent travelers, the company realized that it needed good analytics capabilities to offer a great customer experience.

SAS had already created a customer data warehouse, which serves as the foundation for the company’s customer relationship management program. By connecting the warehouse to personalization solutions, the airline could meet the customer digitally at every touchpoint and every digital channel. And because SAS had worked with DXC Technology on the data warehouse project, it didn’t have to look far for additional analytics help.

“DXC has been supporting our enterprise data warehouse for a long time,” says Mattias Karlsson, head of the Business Intelligence Competency Center (BICC) at SAS. “We wanted DXC to expand into all parts of analytics. We felt DXC had a thorough understanding of SAS, and that they had expertise and resources we could use on our journey.”

The airline turned to DXC to complete a three-phase program: conduct a maturity assessment of the current state of SAS analytics; build a reference architecture for a new analytics platform (what it should look like, what solutions it should comprise); and step in as a partner to help scale up delivery of new analytics capabilities and business solutions across SAS.

Turning insights into action

“Digital transformation, for me, is all about being data-driven,” Karlsson says. “You need to go digital, you need to collect the data and you need to start to gain insights for real.”

The company is already focusing on greater service through its SAS app and is exploring greater use of chatbots, Karlsson says. But the advanced analytics the company is pursuing with DXC will enable SAS to optimize its data and take customer support to the next level.

“We have a lot of insights about our customers, but the exciting thing is what we can do next,” says Christina von Euler, head of analytics and development in the Global Sales and Marketing Organization at SAS. “We’re just starting off with personalized communications, but we know there’s so much more we can do in terms of making sure [customers] have the relevant offer in their channel of choice, looking into the future in terms of personalizing the actual journey — how [do] you get to the airport, do you want your meal on board, do you travel with a bag — all of that.”

To get to this future state, the company first set up a steering committee to align business and IT on the analytics journey. The group of business owners, analytics leads and IT team members explored how data and analytics could be used throughout the organization to automate and optimize processes and empower employees to make better decisions.

“SAS is a big company, and we all have different needs,” says von Euler. “We’re getting all the different [people] of SAS who work with analytics to work together in a group for the first time, so we can formulate one business ambition for analytics.”

DXC helped facilitate the discussions, showing different use cases, pointing out the benefits and challenges, and helping to determine how SAS could make the transformation within the analytics area. The committee was a great help when DXC began the process of ascertaining what data analytics efforts were underway and how advanced those efforts were. In turn, the maturity assessment developed by DXC helped gain the trust of the SAS stakeholders.

Hear from the customer

Platform in action

The company’s new Analytics Platform, managed by DXC, is now in production, supporting various initiatives for business solutions that improve revenue management, logistics and customer interactions.

“I think we’ve started that journey in a very good way,” Karlsson says. “It’s exciting to be a part of. We focus on analytics as an enabler to enhance and improve the customer experience and the operational excellence.”

Karlsson is also pleased with the direction SAS is taking. “From here, we want DXC to step up to be a strategic partner that takes responsibility for delivery, leading the projects, bringing in data scientists, bringing in developers,” he says. “DXC has been a great partner to help us see the benefits and the potential within the area of analytics. We are on our journey to create big changes.”

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