The arrival of the Internet may have made travel slightly easier than it used to be but until recently the only way for AirMiles' six million customers to collect or redeem points was through a telephone customer service line.
The system worked fine, but many consumers simply called to check their account balances. And as the company grew, it became apparent that these routine enquiries could be handled more efficiently -- and more cheaply -- through a Web-based system, explains the UK flight reward company's IT director Matthew Young. "The main benefit for us is that we can cope with an increase in business without a commensurate increase in cost," he says. "Using the Web to access information costs us less than if a customer uses the call centre. A computer works for nothing and it doesn't need tea breaks."
AirMiles, a wholly owned subsidiary of British Airways, wanted to build a Web site with a full account management and booking facility, with the aim of servicing 10 percent of customer enquiries online within a year. But delivering these services meant integrating all of AirMiles' own back-office systems and providing links into the booking systems of dozens of partner companies, including airlines, car hire firms and hotel chains.
Incompatible systems
This was an enormous challenge as the travel industry has traditionally relied on a series of proprietary, incompatible IT systems, Young explains. "We recognised the fact that the travel business is quite fragmented and there are very few unifying technologies," he says. "We didn't want to be stuck with a closed system and so we need something that could access our own data but also hook into all the different systems being used by everyone else."
The first stage of the project was to decide on a common integration platform. The priority for AirMiles was to find something that could integrate their own internal systems and which would hook into any number of partner organisations in the future. Young opted for the J2EE platform as he felt it offered the greatest flexibility and chose BEA Weblogic as the central integration platform. "Our preference was for technology that was based on open standards, and J2EE was by far the most appropriate," he says.
