United Airlines
has chosen IBM technology to deploy a powerful customer relationship management system to position the airline to improve its customer service and increase operational efficiencies.

Running IBM`s DB2 database software on IBM eServer Cluster 1600 servers, the new system will help United Airlines manage customer and flight information across its entire organisation, spanning 27 countries and managing all its flights. The enterprise-wide deployment was implemented with the help of IBM Global Services. The new CRM system is built as part of an enterprise-wide data warehouse that will eventually manage more than six terabytes of data. Business Intelligence capabilities will be used to identify trends in passenger flight destinations so the airline can more efficiently co-ordinate and plan flight routes, increase efficiency in managing bookings, and enable one-on-one CRM.

IBM
recently completed the first phase of the deployment, integrating customer and operations data representing more than one terabyte of information. This integrated data is then leveraged with the reservation centres and United.com. The data can be utilised by thousands of United Airlines employees to better manage its customer accounts and improve operations and planning. For example, employees can search through terabytes of data to view and examine variables such as a customer`s most frequently travelled route, or type of travel - business or pleasure - to enable more personalised offers and promotions. Prior to this solution, the company was not able to easily combine these massive streams of data, which are housed in disparate systems.

Future plans to improve customer service will include adding data from call centres, airport ticketing counters and flight kiosks along with other operational and planning centres. The company expects the DB2 data warehouse to exceed six terabytes of information within the next 18 months. With these enhanced capabilities to better satisfy customers and attract additional business, United Airlines projects full payback from its data warehouse investment in one to two years.

 

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