Dutch airline KLM is using a recently established competency
centre for business intelligence to enable the roll-out of a
company-wide ticketing system with business intelligence
capabilities.
From next month, the airline will begin rolling out the
ticketing system from Amadeus. Key to the project will be the
effective creation of new interfaces between Amadeus and its
business intelligence system from SAS.
Speaking at Gartner's annual Business Intelligence Summit
in London, Frank van de Berg, manager of the business intelligence
competence centre at KLM, said the airline's decision to centralise
its application development was crucial in order for it to tackle
the booking system upgrade. This will involve a 30-year-old
platform being replaced by the business intelligence-ready Amadeus
system.
"Centralising means that KLM's IT is now skills-driven rather
than business unit-focused," he said.
"That means we can use our SAS development skills very
efficiently, which is important when you are talking about getting
a business intelligence system right for 2,000 end-users."
Members of the business intelligence development team in the
competency centre are charged with creating hundreds of new
interfaces between Amadeus and the SAS system. Van de Berg said the
aim of centralising the function was to maintain quality while
bringing down development times.
"Within a year we want to make sure our software development is
as fast as possible. And the future of my department is
certification of the SAS developers," he said. Eight developers are
currently working towards SAS certification.
To support the use of SAS within KLM, van de Berg is also
working with the supplier to establish an SAS forum for KLM's users
to enable them get the most out of the available tools.
Establishing the competency centre has also made it easier for
the airline to ensure software standards are maintained across the
business and to create a shared resource of common code, said van
de Berg.
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