Finding Gold in Airline Customer Data

Finding Gold in an Airlines’ Customer Data

Building the Customer Centric Airline

Cliff Seiler / Pankaj Sharma

Southwest Airlines / Loyalty Methods

Proprietary & Confidential

Southwest Airlines – At a Glance

• First flights took off in 1971• Today over 3,600 daily flights• 95 destinations• Six countries• “Southwest Effect”• Largest U.S. domestic airline• Profitable 42 consecutive years


Loyalty Methods – At a Glance

• Founded in 2006• 19 Clients across multiple

industries • 400 strong workforce• 7 year partnership with

Southwest providing expertise in:- Loyalty, Call Center and Campaign

Management- Enterprise Data Integration- Business Insights- Offshore Delivery Center

“Their specialty in Siebel Loyalty and CRM

products, deep-benching of highly-skilled

talent, and effective utilization of their off-

shore/on-shore model has all been crucial in

helping us achieve our goals.”

Kathleen Wayton Southwest Airlines Vice PresidentCommercial Business Transformation Solutions

“ Loyalty Methods’ strength was the

people they brought to the project. They

have a phenomenal understanding of the

product and a get it done attitude that

matched up well with the legendary

Southwest Airlines Warrior Spirit.”Joe MigisSouthwest Airlines Vice PresidentProduct Solutions


Started off Simple – World is Changing!

• Original focus on simplicity• Embrace change and complexity• Maintain Operational Excellence• Enhance Customer Experience• Strategic initiatives

- New Loyalty platform- One reservation system- International destinations


Customer ServiceFierce commitment by every Southwest employee to show LUV for every customer – friendliness, caring, awareness, sensitivity

Customer CentricityFierce commitment by the company to drive greater customer and shareholder value through deep, systemic acknowledgment of customer differences, which informs and drives all business decision making

Transform Customer Service focus to a Customer Centric organization


Better serve our Customers and personalize their experience with Southwest⁻ Understanding Customers at a

more granular level⁻ Provide products and services

that are valued by our Customers

⁻ Predict our Customer’s needs and wants

Gold in the Loyalty Data– Enable Customer Centricity


• Analytics inconsistent with OLTP

Barriers to enabling Customer Centricity

Unreliable

Not Customized

• No Enterprise support from data model/database • Forced to use UTC dates • Many unused tables/columns• Complex queries/processing

Slow• Multi-day OLTP to Analytic ETL processes • Query performance issues• Mixed OLAP/discovery-oriented analytics lacking

Data/Model Insufficient

• Marketing data could not be integrated with Siebel• Dimensional design with surrogate keys

No Self-Serve• No Enterprise BI/data discovery • Difficult to create view, mart, dashboard or metric • No real data visualization capability


Customer data domain within

Enterprise model

Quickly understandCustomer

RFP for Proof of Concept to multiple vendors• Demonstrate key analytic capabilities

- Flexibility- Performance- Consistency

• Demonstrate an Industry data model - Must accommodate Customer domain- Supported with a modeling tool- Coverage for additional airline data

domains- Extensible

Select the Platform Partner - Proof of Concept

•Activities

• Impacts

•Segments

•Needs


Proof of Concept – Requirements

• Real business cases• Driven by the business• Converted data needed

to run the jobs/business cases

• Converted into the data models

• Run jobs in parallel


• Processed large quantities of data in specified window

• Significant reduction in time for Business queries

• Semantic layer provided fresh and fast results

• Mixed workloads were not an issue

• THDM support for Enterprise

Proof of Concept - Teradata Summary


• Sourced directly from Siebel- Allows retirement of Siebel Analytics - Ensures completeness/consistency

• Mapped Siebel to THDM (Party, Loyalty & Quality Contact)- Southwest/THDM logical/physical abbreviations- Data profiling- Identified natural keys

• Full and incremental ETL- Point in time 7+ Billion conversion- Near-real time updates

• Semantic Layer- Reports, Dashboards & Metrics

• Non-Siebel data/processes converted

Siebel to Travel & Hospitality Data Model (THDM)


ETL and Semantic Layer Architecture

Siebel ETL THDM

External Data Sources –Vendors, Legacy

warehouse, southwest.com

Campaigns Reporting &Dashboards

Visualization MarketAnalytics

DataScience

Semantic Layer (Business Views & Metrics)


Barriers overcomethat enable Customer Centricity

Unreliable

Not Customized

• Extended THDM • Dates maintained from Customer’s perspective• Eliminated unused tables/columns• Complex queries/processing greatly simplified

Slow• OLTP to Analytic ETL completes within a hour• No query performance issues• Supports timely OLAP/discovery-oriented analytics

Data/Model Insufficient

• Marketing structures integrated with THDM• 3NF design with natural keys• Data model maintained in Erwin repository

No Self-Serve• Semantic layer enables user insight development • Data Labs allow view, mart, dashboard or metric creation• Tableau connectivity enables data visualization

• Consistent with OLTP• Active/Passive replicated failover architecture


• Customer data domain within Integrated Data Warehouse (IDW) based on THDM

• Continuous OLTP flow enabled

• Self Service capability realized with Data Labs

• Semantic Layer leveraged for metrics, reports and dashboard reporting

• Campaign Management re-directed to IDW

• Data Governance established

• Metadata captured/published

Customer Foundation Highlights

Southwest Airline’s Route Map to Building Better Customer InsightsWednesday 2:15-3PM


• Minimize customization by leveraging industry data models

• Work with your vendors as partners in the POC phase

• Engage business partners to own and govern the data

• Understand where the most value can be achieved to prioritize your plan

• Choose the right implementation partner to create a seamless team

• Build and execute in phases.

• Execute! - GO FOR THE GOLD!

Key Findings and Takeaways


Questions/CommentsEmail: [email protected] and/or [email protected]

Link Ushttps://www.linkedin.com/in/cliffseilerdataexperthttps://www.linkedin.com/in/pankajsharmaLM

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Technology

Finding Gold in Airline Customer Data