BA improves BI with software package

British Airways (BA) is part-way through the installation of business intelligence (BI) software from Trillium to improve data analysis across the organisation.

The company deals with vast amounts of data during its regular processes; these include check-in, ticketing and seat allocation, as well as data relating to demand forecasting, pricing and route and capacity planning.

Paul Shade, head of business intelligence at BA, conducted an internal data quality assurance review and found that the firm's legacy data was stored in many different formats, according to different standards and, despite existing data quality practices, varied in terms of quality.

The company opted to invest in the Trillium Software System; a software stack comprising TS Discovery, TS Quality, TS Insight, TS Director and Enterprise Integration.

"One reason for selecting the system was that it scales to hundreds of millions of records and is able to work across multiple systems and data formats," said Shade.

"The system significantly outperformed other tools when in trials. It also highlighted unexpected data issues, spurring a raft of demands to identify and resolve these and other previously unknown problems."

In terms of a return on investment, Shade said that the Trillium Software System enables BA's data analysts to work more quickly, enabling faster and better strategic and operational decisions.

"In addition, being able to analyse marketing communications helps us optimise responses to customers," he added.

As a result of Trillium having cleansed data across the group, BA is now better placed to update its mission-critical Transaction Processing Facility. The Facility runs processes such as booking, seat reservations, ticketing and billing.

The bespoke legacy system dates back to the 1980s.

According to Shade, the assured quality of source data will be essential to the data migrations and processes that will support successful implementation of the new system.