Sri Lankan Airlines: You’re our world

Business Intelligence(MS7SL83O): Assignment 2

UWL ID ANC ID Name

21361781 5838 Tehan Paul Ranil Samarasinha

21361767 5718 Kalinga Thilina Ranilal Silva

21346788 5370 Vindika Nirmal Sudasinghe

21346777 5373 Dulan Padma Sudasinghe

Date: : 25.12.2017
Words : 1899
Table of Contents

Table of Contents .................................................................................................................................... 2

1. Summary ......................................................................................................................................... 4
2. Organizational Background ............................................................................................................. 5
3. Business Aims and Objectives ......................................................................................................... 6
4. Main Operational Areas .................................................................................................................. 6
4.1 Engineering ................................................................................................................................... 6
Types of maintenance checks .......................................................................................................... 6
4.2 On time performance as a KPI ...................................................................................................... 7
Technical issues ............................................................................................................................... 7
5. Systems & Information Technology ................................................................................................ 8
6. Analysis of Decisions ....................................................................................................................... 9
6.1 BI & Decision-Making Lifecycle ..................................................................................................... 9
6.2 Decision Making at an Organization ........................................................................................... 10
6.3 Role of BI/IS at Each Layer .......................................................................................................... 11
7. Risk/Impact Analysis ..................................................................................................................... 12
8. Challenges ..................................................................................................................................... 13
9. Conclusion/ Recommendations .................................................................................................... 13
References ............................................................................................................................................ 14

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Glossary of Terms

IS – Information Systems

EIS – Executive Information Systems

MIS – Management Information Systems

TPS – Transaction Processing Systems

HRIS – Human Resources Information Systems

KMS – Knowledge Management Systems

FIS – Financial Information Systems

CRM – Customer Relationship Management

MkIS – Market Information Systems

ERP – Enterprise Resource Planning

DSS – Decision Support Systems

Db – Database

DWH – Data Warehouse

OLTP – Online Transaction Process

OLAP – Online Analytical Process

KPI – Key Performance Indicators

SSBI – Self-Service Business Intelligence

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1. Summary

At the forefront of service, comfort, safety, reliability and punctuality; Sri Lankan Airlines aims to be
the most preferred Airline in Asia. Whilst the company has reported +5% growth on revenue for the
year ending in March 31st, 2017, it has overall experienced loss in profit due to increase in operational
costs.

Sri Lankan airlines, whilst having many key functions that are equally important, the engineering
function garners special focus with its contributions towards not only ensuring the company’s vision
of being the preferred airline in Asia but also the safety of all patrons that fly Sri Lankan.

At Sri Lankan Airlines, the engineering department depends on the AURA system to provide effective
updates on maintenance checks for aircraft of the airline. It Is stated that 79% of flight delays are
caused by technical issues. This is a factor that plays a direct role in how maintenance activities are
carried out and the increase in operational costs to the airline.

Whilst, Sri Lankan Airlines invests heavily on the utilization of Business intelligence to support their
organizations decisions and implementation of strategies; there still remains a risk to operations
through human error. Such errors as such as mis entering data created a loss of USD 441,010.39 for
the company (Sri Lankan Airlines, 2017) for the month of March 2017. such technical issues, causes
the system to putout erroneous data on system maintenance which amounts to 79% of the total
service disruptions.

A definite challenge in BI, is to obtain and maintain accurate data. As most BI data is sourced from
different systems and through different data collection methods, there could always be provision for
human error.

The report will further explore recommendations to arrest such issues impacting the company’s
operational costs – such as system integrations, dual audits and real time entry of issues to increase
information accuracy.

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2. Organizational Background
Launched in 1979, Sri Lanka’s National Carrier is an award-winning airline with a solid reputation for
service, comfort, safety, reliability, and punctuality. The airline’s hub is at Bandaranaike International
Airport in Colombo, providing convenient connections to its global route network of 103 destinations
in 48 countries.

The airline company although reported a revenue growth of +5% for the year ended in March 2017; it
largely experienced an overall loss due to the high operational expenditures incurred throughout the
year with the airport revamping/ runway resurfacing, as they had significant impact on the company’s
overall revenue and expenditure.

Sri Lankan Airlines Group Profit & Loss Account 2016/17

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3. Business Aims and Objectives

Mission
We are in the transportation business. We
Vision provide our customers with a reliable and
pleasant travel experience. We provide our
To be the most business partners with a variety of
preferred Airline in innovative, professional and mutually
Asia profitable services. We meet shareholder
expectations of profitably marketing Sri Lanka
and contributing and contributing towards
the wellbeing of society. We are a
competent, proactive and diligent team. Our
contribution is recognized and rewarded.

4. Main Operational Areas

At Sri Lankan Airlines, the engineering department depends on the AURA system to provide effective
updates on maintenance checks for aircraft of the airline.

4.1 Engineering

Types of maintenance checks

A checks – Routine maintenance checks that are done every 6 months. These are not as extensive as
C checks but they require the aircraft to be grounded for a few days.

C checks – Extensive checks where the aircraft is brought into the hangar and every part is checked
and parts with a limited life are replaced. These checks require the cabin seats to be removed as well.
These checks can go on for 2 to 4 weeks.

Daily/Weekly/ Monthly checks – these are done while the aircraft is on the tarmac. They range from
1 hour to 6 hours of ground time and can be done with minimum personnel.

All the above checks have distinct part replacements and servicing that needs to be done on a timely
manner for each individual part of the aircraft from the tiniest nut and bolt replacement to an engine
overhaul. This is where the AURA systems capabilities come into play. It provides a data warehouse of

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maintenance histories and future maintenance activities for each part of every aircraft in operation.
Therefore, it is vital that the correct data is entered into the system for it to provide an effective
output.

AURA provides bulletins to engineers with all the scheduled maintenance tasks of the entire fleet.
Once a prompt is given to the department by the system for a aircraft, the engineers then pass on the
work to be done to the aircraft mechanics and technicians to carry out these tasks. Once completed,
they input the record of the tasks carried out back into the system. This includes any ad hoc repairs
done while in the process of the original assigned repair.

4.2 On time performance as a KPI

Sri Lankan Airlines currently is the 5th most punctual airline among 40 of the world’s most popular
airlines. It has an on-time performance rating of 86.49% compared to the industry average of 78.33%.
This means that 86.49% of flights depart within 15 minutes of the planned departure time (Corporate
Communications, SriLankan Airlines, 2017).

Technical issues
Internal documents state that 79% of flight delays are caused by technical issues. This is a factor that
plays a direct role in how maintenance activities are carried out. “Predictive Maintenance” is a key
task that helps to mitigate this issue by using the predictive maintenance notifications of AURA, the
engineering department can reduce technical issues that would lead to flight delays.

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5. Systems & Information Technology
BI is generated from numerous collated data from various sub-systems such as HRIS1, KMS, FIS, CRM,
an MkIS. Information generated through such systems (OLTP data) are fed in to an DWH and is
organised differently (OLAP data) to how it’s stored in the other systems for ease of analysis (Oracle
Inc, 2017).

There are numerous application and software technologies that are being used to support decision
making across functions in Sri Lankan Airlines, including software applications such as:

i. SAP Business Objects – ERP used by many multinational industries.

ii. IFS EOI – Enterprise Operational Intelligence
iii. Adaptive Discovery – A web-based visualisation platform
iv. Microsoft SQL Server – BI edition
v. Microsoft SharePoint – For actionable decision making
vi. IBM Cognos BI – A cognitive intelligence system

Such systems are complete solutions for an enterprise with scalability and modularity
(softwareadvice.com, 2017).

As per Gartner Methodologies, 2017, the industry leading solutions and value scores are plotted on
the below quadrant (Guinn, 2017).

Figure 1:Solution Capabilities (source: https://www.softwareadvice.com//imglib/frontrunner/fr_bi_v2.png)

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Please refer “Glossary of Terms”

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6. Analysis of Decisions
The Business Pressure-Responses-Support Model, demonstrates how pressure and opportunity from
environmental factors, determine the response of an organization and shape key decisions (Sharda,
et al., 2014)

Figure 1: Decision Making Process

Thus, the role of BI can be further connotated as the capturing of correct environmental input to
generate accurate information to support decisions in an organization. And enables the derivation and
implementation of strategic stance (olap.com, 2017) through data-driven DSS.

6.1 BI & Decision-Making Lifecycle

Figure 2: OLTP to OLAP – How Business Intelligence is Used to Improve Processes

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As businesses are driven through strategy; the execution of strategy creates processes which
generates data, and is fed into the system. These data are analysed or mined by the DW to generate
coherent understanding of the processes, environments, stakeholders, and their behaviour, allowing
to reshape the strategies to increase efficiency and productivity, which in turn changes the processes
and is a cyclic endeavour

6.2 Decision Making at an Organization

“IS” can be divided into 3 pillars for decision making. Namely EIS, MIS, and TPS (Euromed Marseille
School of Management, 2017). Diagrams below demonstrates the types of decision making tiers by IS.

Strategic Decisions

Tactical Decisions

Operational Decisions

Figure 3: Three Tier Pyramid Model of Decision Making Using IS

A tight cohesion among the IS layers should ensure proper information is passed through the system.

Figure 4: Five Tier Pyramid Model of Information Flow in IS

Further, SSBI or Self-Service Business Intelligence (olap.com, 2017) could ensure timely, decision
making without the delay of report generation through a third party.

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6.3 Role of BI/IS at Each Layer
According to literature (Euromed Marseille School of Management, 2017), the systems used by
Sri Lankan Airlines can be described as follows:

i. Transaction Processing Systems – Cross boundary systems which provide information for
other systems and takes input from the operational staff.

ii. Management Information Systems – Used by middle management to evaluate performance,

and productivity.

iii. Decision Support Systems – Facilitates analytical knowledge to the senior management, and
provide the necessary insight for the decision-making process.

iv. Executive Information Systems – Provides strategic level information, enables the key
stakeholders to determine strategic direction.

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7. Risk/Impact Analysis
Human error is prevalent, and may introduce data inaccuracies.

One of the issues is some repair or maintenance data are not entered and not flagged. This causes
technical failures or delays in flights, triggering a service disruption. This created a loss of USD
441,010.39 for the company (Sri Lankan Airlines, 2017) for the month of March 2017. And has created
false flags in the Predicative Maintenance Bulletins generating issues for the other maintenance
engineers while generating erroneous information. Further, such technical issues, causes the system
to putout erroneous data on system maintenance which amounts to 79% of the total service
disruption according to the same report. E.g. – if UL225 to Dubai is delayed by 2 hours, this causes the
return flight to be delayed as well. As the aircraft was also scheduled to fly to Jakarta after returning
from Dubai, the schedule becomes useless due to this domino effect.

Figure 5:Disruption of Service by Root Cause (Source: FDCA, March 2017)

This leads to several other issues other than the cost of delayed services

Other engineers, using the system are not aware of the true plight of the aircraft, Regular maintenance
of the aircraft cannot be flagged and other required financial resource for the following month cannot
be updated to the financial system for budgeting. Non-maintenance could be disastrous to the flight
and passengers. Moreover, Passengers may miss the connecting flights and the airline must bear the
cost and rebook flights and provide accommodation to the affected. Eventually, leading to the loss of
brand image.

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Such inaccurate data had played a part in some of the major air crash incidents, such as the crash of
the PIA flight PK-661 due to engine failure (Sirajuddin & Abbas, 2016), and the Tara airplane crash on
Northern Nepal (Pokharel, et al., 2016) due to technical reasons, and demonstrate the gravity of
“Clinical Data”, “System-wide Critical Collaborative Care”, “Early Warning Systems”, “Standard of
Care”, (Sharda, et al., 2014) when using BI.

8. Challenges
A definite challenge in BI, is to obtain and maintain accurate data. As most BI data is sourced from
different systems and through different data collection methods, there could always be provision for
human error. Further, unsensitized, unstructured data or unavailability of information could result in
inaccuracies in BI applications. Thus, consistently maintaining the quality of data and standards is the
utmost challenge, which requires specialist skills and cross functional teams such as Data Analysts and
Data scientists.

Additionally, the higher cost in sourcing specialized skills are another challenge in BI. And the cost of
system integration and implementing raises the cost ceiling.

9. Conclusion/ Recommendations
i. Human errors should be minimized through, dual audits; cost benefits could be higher than
late diagnostics of issues.
ii. Introduce automated communications with other systems as currently, systems work
independently and require manual intervention.
iii. Introduce/instil processes to ensure the overall system issues are logged, irrespective of job
function, and reward accordingly for early diagnostics.
iv. Enable real-time entry of issues to the AURA TPS, by cataloguing all possible issues
systematically, and enabling input via mobile devices to increase information accuracy.

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References
Euromed Marseille School of Management, 2017. Euromed Marseille School of Management, World
Med MBA Program - Information Systems and Strategy Course. [Online]
Available at: http://www.chris-kimble.com/Courses/World_Med_MBA/Types-of-Information-
System.html
[Accessed 20 December 2017].

Guinn, J., 2017. FrontRunners for Business Intelligence, October 2017. [Online]
Available at:
https://www.softwareadvice.com/bi/?deployment_id=&market_products_sort_order=&market_pro
ducts_sortby=great_fit&more=true&price_ranges=5,4&stars=&segment_id=&platforms=&int_site_c
ode=&subsize1_id=#top-products
[Accessed 20 December 2017].

olap.com, 2017. Business Intelligence. [Online]

Available at: http://olap.com/learn-bi-olap/olap-bi-definitions/business-intelligence/
[Accessed 20 December 2017].

Oracle Inc, 2017. Types of Data Stored in a Data Warehouse. [Online]

Available at: https://docs.oracle.com/cd/B10500_01/olap.920/a95295/designd4.htm
[Accessed 20 December 2017].

Pokharel, S., Yan, H. & Botelho, G., 2016. Plane crashes in Nepal midway through 19-minute flight; 23
feared dead. [Online]
Available at: http://edition.cnn.com/2016/02/24/asia/nepal-missing-plane/
[Accessed 25 December 2017].

Sharda, R. et al., 2014. Business Intelligence and Analytics. In: Systems for Decision Support, Global
Edition. Harlow: Pearson Education M.U.A, pp. 35-35.

Sharda, R. et al., 2014. Business Intelligence and Analytics. In: Systems for Decision Support, Global
Edition. Harlow: Pearson Education M.U.A, pp. 118-119.

Sirajuddin & Abbas, Y., 2016. PIA flight PK-661 crashes enroute to Islamabad, no survivors. [Online]
Available at: https://www.dawn.com/news/1301042
[Accessed 24 December 2017].

softwareadvice.com, 2017. Business Intelligence Tools. [Online]

Available at:
https://www.softwareadvice.com/bi/?deployment_id=&market_products_sort_order=&market_pro
ducts_sortby=great_fit&more=true&price_ranges=5,4&stars=&segment_id=&platforms=&int_site_c
ode=&subsize1_id=
[Accessed 20 December 2017].

Corporate Communications, SriLankan Airlines, 2017. SriLankan Airlines. [Online]

Available at: http://www.srilankan.com/en_uk/coporate/news-details/158
[Accessed 23 December 2017].

Sri Lankan Airlines, 2017. Flight Dstruption Cost Analysis (FDCA), Katunayake: Sri Lankan Airlines.

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