Microsoft Office System

Customer Solution Case Study

Brazilian Airline Automates Web Content Management, Drives Agility, and Reduces Costs

Overview

Country or Region: Brazil

Industry: Transportation

Customer Profile

Based in So Paulo, Gol Airlines is the largest low-cost carrier in Latin America and the second in Brazil. The company offers nearly 800 daily flights to 59 destinations and employs 17,000 people.

Business Situation

Since most Gol customers purchase tickets through the Internet, the company needed to upgrade its Web site and expedite its Web content management processes, in order to offer promotions online more quickly.

Solution

Gol migrated its intranet portal to a Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 infrastructure and used the built-in Web content management workflow to streamline content publication.

Benefits

Improves business agility

Reduces IT costs

Improves online experience

Simplifies regulatory compliance

Delivers enterprisewide benefits

Before, it would have taken us two weeks to publish four online marketing campaigns. With our new SharePoint Web publication workflow, it takes just one. We gained 11 days of ticket sales.

Renata Caovila Domingues, Online Marketing, Gol Intelligent Airlines

Based in So Paulo, Brazil, Gol Linhas Areas Inteligentes [Gol Intelligent Airlines] positions itself as the best option for people who appreciate quality air services for a good price. Gol has always taken advantage of the almost unlimited reach of the Internet, offering tickets online for the first time in Brazil. To build on its already strong Web presence, Gol migrated its Internet site infrastructure to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and integrated Web content publication workflows. In addition, the company reduced by three days the time it took employees to publish marketing promotions on the Web and is currently maximizing the value of its e-commerce portal with timely content that launches more quickly, reaches more people, and enables more sales. For Gol, this is a key business advantage to help it navigate a profitable course through turbulent economic times.

Situation

Gol Linhas Areas Inteligentes [Gol Intelligent Airlines] began operations in 2001, with six Boeing 737 Next Generation aircraft, offering scheduled low-fare flights for the first time in the Brazilian market. Since then, the company has popularized air travel in the country, carrying over 100 million passengers and enabling 10 million people to fly for the very first time. Today, Gol is the second largest airline in Brazil, with a fleet of 107 aircraft that operate in 59 destinations throughout South America.

In its bid to present itself as an airline that is serious about democratizing the skies, Gol took advantage of the Internet. Since day one, we have differentiated ourselves by using the latest technologies, says Gustavo Bodra, Portal Administrator at Gol Intelligent Airlines. We were the first airline company to invest in the Internet as a way to reduce fares, sell tickets, and promote services. In fact, we can be credited with helping to change the way Brazilians purchase air tickets.

Currently, more than 80 percent of Gols customers purchase their tickets through the companys Internet portal, which corresponds to 80 percent of the companys total revenue. The Web portal is the companys most important marketing, communications, and public relations tool, providing access to the Gol SMILES frequent flyer program and important travel information.

Given the value of the portal in supporting business strategies, Gol considers it imperative to maintain a compelling, robust, and secure Internet presence. Originally, the companys Internet portal was a collection of approximately 8,000 Microsoft Active Server Pages (ASP) that supported 240 simultaneous visitors and served an average of 30 million views a day for an average of 1 million visitors per day. The portals integrated e-commerce solution, called New Skies, is hosted by Navitaire and processed on average 741.756 transactions per month. Also, Gol has an intranet built on Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 that is accessed by all employees.

When Gol reevaluated its public-facing Web site in 2008, it saw an opportunity for improvement. The companys main concern centered on the complex management processes required to upload content to the Internet portal. (See Figure 1.) In order to publish new content or update existing content, users had to complete more than 15 steps, progressing through staging, development, and production environments.

Business owners were frustrated because it took days to get things published, recalls Renata Caovila Domingues, Online Marketing at Gol Intelligent Airlines. Everything had to go through the IT department, where we had five people dedicated to uploading content. Gol wanted these people to work on more strategic IT projects.

For Gol, inefficient Web content management tools had significant business ramifications. First, it delayed the timely launch of sales promotionsand bringing sales campaigns to the market quickly is key to maintaining competitiveness in an industry where ticket prices can change at any moment.

Second, Gol needed to quickly publish informational content to improve public relations, without involving IT. The PR team uses the site to communicate vital public announcements, says Giselma Becaro, Project Management Officer at Gol Intelligent Airlines. Customers rely on our site for accurate information to improve their travel experience.

Third, Gols Web content management process compromised the airlines ability to comply with industry regulations, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. We have to be able to prove what was published on a certain day and who authorized it, continues Becaro. We needed simplified checks and approvals throughout the content publication workflow.

Adds Bodra: While our Web content management issues were an immediate concern, we also wanted to boost customer experience on our Web portal through more user-friendly navigation and an improved search experience. We were not interested in acquiring several point solutions to help us accomplish these goals, so we began looking for a single, scalable portal infrastructure which included those capabilities.

Solution

Gol Intelligent Airlines chose Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 as the infrastructure for its enterprise portal because of its integrated content management and enterprise search capabilities, as well as its positive experience hosting the intranet on Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003.

We had firsthand experience of the benefits of a SharePoint portal solution with built-in communication and collaboration features, says Bodra. We saw an opportunity to consolidate our intranet and Internet sites on the same solution, taking advantage of savings in ongoing IT management costs. So we decided to run two concurrent projects: upgrading the intranet and the extranet to Office SharePoint Server 2007.

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Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides comprehensive Web content management features that Gol employees can use to manage and streamline the Web publishing life cycle, without IT involvement. Business owners can use sophisticated versioning within approval workflows to quickly create new content for select approvers in the Marketing Department. They can also specify schedules for the deployment of content from the staging environment to the companys Web portal. These publishing schedules can also include an expiration date, an important feature because of Gols short-term promotions.

To achieve fast rollout for the new site, Gols IT team made some minor changes to the portals look and feel, and then copied and pasted most of the information from the old site into the Content Web Part within the new sites pages. The team used Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 to create a link between the externally hosted e-commerce system, New Skies, and Gols enterprise resource system. Gol opted for a staged rollout, launching the Argentinean portal in Spanish first, so that the IT team could monitor usage. Three weeks later, Gol launched the Brazilian site. Except for some country-specific information, such as vaccines required for travel, the content for both sites is the same.

For all new Web content, Gol is using the out-of-the-box workflows in Office SharePoint Server 2007 to take advantage of a streamlined, end-to-end Web content management solution. (See Figure 2.) Today, Gol business owners can publish Web content with very little trainin

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g and using simple authoring tools, such as Microsoft Office Word 2007.

Benefits

Migrating its Internet portal to a Microsoft infrastructure with an integrated Web content management solution is helping Gol Intelligent Airlines to endure tough economic times. Despite increased competition and a global financial downturn, Gol has made significant gains in business agility by quickly launching promotions to take advantage of a volatile market and drive revenue. The new portal offers visitors an improved online experience and the company is reducing IT costs and simplifying regulatory compliance.

Improves Business Agility

In November 2008, Gol launched four marketing campaigns along with its new sales site. It was an auspicious beginning to a new level of agility that bodes well for building a competitive advantage. Before, it would have taken us two weeks to publish four online marketing campaigns, says Caovila Domingues. With our new SharePoint Web publication workflow, it took just one. We gained 11 days of ticket sales.

Taking advantage of workflows in Office SharePoint Server 2007, Gol employees can automate much of the content review and the approval process, removing more than 50 percent of the steps required in the previous version of this workflow. Now, Gols marketing staff can quickly launch online promotions when we see an opportunity. We dont depend on the IT team to do it for us anymore, says Caovila Domingues. The end result is that we can offer more promotions, more quickly to make more sales.

Reduces IT Costs

Business users now take ownership of publishing Web content, which reduces the burden on the IT department and saves costs. We no longer require the services of five people in IT to manage Web content publication, says Bodra. We are talking about savings of $300,000 annually.

Since standardizing on Office SharePoint Server 2007 for both its intranet and Internet, Gol has enjoyed the benefits of an integrated portal environment. It costs less to manage both portals on one platform, confirms Bodra. Since we deployed SharePoint Server, we have reduced our workload maintaining the portals by approximately 95 percent.

Improves Online Experience

As additional business units take ownership of publishing their content on the portal, site visitors benefit from more timely and varied information. Staff in the Safety, Security, and Airports departments can quickly and easily publish new travel regulations, such as ID requirements and security alerts, says Becaro. By facilitating the communication of this vital information to our customers, Gol can build trust in the value of the information it provides customers online. Its a key part of our commitment to good service.

And according to Bodra, visitors to the site can expect better performance, with pages loading almost 20 times faster than they did on the previous site. We launched a new promotion recently and experienced 10 percent more visits compared to a similar promotion we did in March 2007, with traffic peaking at 3000 simultaneous users, he says. Page loads remained at less than 1 second compared to 19 seconds that year.

Also, Gol plans to update the site with better user experience and to deploy Enterprise Search capability in Office SharePoint Server 2007 to improve the search experience for site visitors.

Simplifies Regulatory Compliance

With the improved tracking and reporting capabilities in its SharePoint workflows, Gol gains transparency into its content review and approval processes, complying with Sarbanes-Oxley and other regulations.

Should we face any lawsuits regarding Web promotions or Web content, both Sarbanes-Oxley and Brazilian legal requirements state that we have to be able to backtrack through the whole publishing process to ensure that we are in compliance with regulations, explains Becaro. Thats a lot easier to do with our SharePoint-based automated workflow. We can see whats published on a particular day, what version, and who approved it. All you have to do is go to the page, check the version and workflow histories, and thats it.

Delivers Enterprisewide Benefits

Gol also enjoys enterprisewide communication and collaboration benefits from its integrated portal solution. Now that the intranet runs on Office SharePoint Server 2007, all 17,000 employees, including 4,200 flight crew members, use the solution every day. At Gol, we rely 100 percent on Office SharePoint Server 2007, says Becaro. It enables our flight crews and ground staffs to find and collaborate on the information needed to keep our aircraft flying safely and on time.

Microsoft Office System

The Microsoft Office system is the business worlds chosen environment for information work, providing the programs, servers, and services that help you succeed by transforming information into impact.

For more information about the Microsoft Office system, go to:

www.microsoft.com/office

Business owners were frustrated because it took days to get things published."

Renata Caovila Domingues, Online Marketing, Gol Intelligent Airlines

EMBED PowerPoint.Slide.12

Figure 1. Complex Web content management process slowed the launch of online marketing promotions.

EMBED PowerPoint.Slide.12

Figure 2. Gol deployed a Web content management solution based on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 to automate its Web content publication process.

At Gol, we rely 100 percent on Office SharePoint Server 2007. It enables our flight crews and ground staffs to find and collaborate on the information needed to keep our aircraft flying safely and on time.

Giselma Becaro, Project Management Officer, Gol Intelligent Airlines

Software and Services

Microsoft Office system

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

Microsoft Office Word 2007

Microsoft Server Product Portfolio

BizTalk Server 2006

Hardware

Server

Dell 2950

Microsoft BizTalk Server 2002

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published July 2009

For More Information

For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to: HYPERLINK "http://www.microsoft.com"www.microsoft.com

For more information about Gol Airlines products and services, call 55 11 5504 4410 or visit the companys Web site at:

HYPERLINK "http://www.voegol.com.br/int/Paginas/home.aspx" www.voegol.com.br/int/Paginas/home.aspx

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