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Airlines can cut maintenance costs by leveraging IT solutions

Airlines typically spend between 10 and 20 percent of their operating costs for maintenance and thus ultimately for preserving the safety, reliability and value of their fleet. With its customized IT solutions, Lufthansa Systems helps airlines to lower MRO costs. By using SAP R/3 Aerospace & Defense, for instance, airlines can reduce their maintenance costs by about 15 percent. Lufthansa Systems played a decisive role in the development of SAP R/3 Aerospace & Defense and today remains a leading partner to SAP in this field.

The key to this improvement lies in the integration of IT systems which make information available throughout a company across multiple sites. This is Lufthansa Systems' specialty and an important aspect of its product portfolio. The decades of experience and in-depth expertise which Lufthansa Systems has in the MRO field are a major advantage in this context. Like all areas of aviation, MRO involves highly-complex processes. Careful planning is the key to efficiency and the greatest possible safety. In practice, no two maintenance events are ever alike. Each individual procedure must be planned, carried out and documented correctly. It must be possible to trace the materials used - right down to every single screw - even decades later.

Another important aspect of MRO involves handling the considerable amounts of data which arise in connection with maintenance processes. The highest levels of availability and data security are a must here. To achieve this, Lufthansa Systems operates one of the most state-of-the-art, secure data centers in Europe. As a full-service provider, Lufthansa Systems can handle the outsourcing or complete operation of the IT systems of airlines and MRO providers.

Through its unique combination of IT competence and aviation expertise, Lufthansa Systems is contributing to advances in the MRO field. Manufacturers are developing innovative approaches to the maintenance of aircraft such as the A380 or Boeing 787. These approaches demand that airlines have a highly developed IT landscape - and an experienced partner who can combine wrenches with computers in an intelligent way.

Customer loyalty programs: perfecting the art of targeting the right customer

Experts worldwide agree that it costs 10 times more to acquire new customers than to keep existing ones. The numbers of airline lounges, benefits for frequent travelers, special VIP-services increase steadily.

But simply retaining more customers is not the answer - leading loyalty marketers are selectively retaining those who provide most profit and don’t waste any money on those who don't. The effective implementation of a customer relationship management solution can increase an airline’s revenue by as much as 2.4 percent a year, according to a study published by McKinsey. The challenges of strong competition in the aviation industry make it more and more important to address customer concerns and convince them that their choice of a particular airline is right.

In answer to these demands, Lufthansa Systems has developed its FrequentLine customer loyalty program which enables the airline to identify and focus on their most valuable customers and business partners. Recently implemented at Garuda Indonesia, FrequentLine is a flexible and modular solution featuring three fully integrated modules covering the needs of individual customers, the requirements of corporate customers and ensuring the loyalty of agents. Along with passengers, private companies, as well as corporations, evaluate intensively the benefits of a business relationship with an airline. Travel managers are responsible for identifying the airlines that best serve their employees.

With FrequentLine, campaigns addressing target groups on the spot can quickly be implemented, creating valuable private customer and company profiles for the airline. They are based on a high quality of customer data resulting from reservation data as well as from individual customer or company profile data. Overall, due to Open Source technology an early return on investment is guaranteed for the airline. Individual customers, corporations and business partners have an easy access to their loyalty account via Internet. Here they collect their flights including the automatic reward crediting and order the desired incentives based on a defined reward catalogue. The previous lack of data for the loyalty of customer is now history.