The Challenge
To allow for current demand, and an almost doubling in future demand, Auckland Airport wanted to improve business results and agility. This had to be achieved through increased visibility of critical data across the business, via a user-friendly system and tools.
The Solution
With an anticipated 24 million passengers a year by 2025, Auckland Airport has to continuously build capacity and improve services to cope with the anticipated rise in passenger numbers.
Auckland Airport had an existing system which had worked well in the past, but managers wanted more flexibility and fast access to daily interactive reporting to allow for quick, timely and informed decisions to be made. They also wanted to augment information from the existing system with additional data sources.
Datacom quickly ramped up a specialist business intelligence project team to provide more user-friendly access to information in the existing system and new data sources. Over 125 charts and 25 dashboards were implemented in just four months. The speed of delivery of the initial project and business value realised led Auckland Airport to extend the engagement to a multi-stream programme to deliver a business-wide analytics platform.
The airport’s goal is to improve business agility and optimise its offerings through better analytics, producing win-win scenarios for itself and its customers. For example, the airport is able to increase revenue through targeted promotions and reducing the average cost of car parking for its customers. The company is also able to assist its retailers to maximise their returns by gaining deeper insights into customer behavior as they interact with the broad range of airport services.
Data lineage was a priority to meet compliance requirements for regulators such as the Commerce Commission. The system is designed to provide accurate, consistent and traceable data across multiple applications, streamlining compliance reporting and improving auditability.
Airport staff now manage their own information, allowing them to spend more time evaluating information to better understand their business. And, encouragingly, Auckland Airport is seeing a culture shift within the company where better visibility of new data is increased accountability, improved efficiency and ultimately better performance.
“The airport has improved business agility and profitability with near-real-time access to analytics information. In addition, it has simplified and strengthened regulatory compliance and significantly reduced reporting time.”
Cameron Brill - Business Technology Manager, Auckland Airport