The client was looking to improve its customers' self-service experiences across touchpoints, such as boarding pass issuance, seat booking, and rebooking, etc. The main objective was to provide a more tailored travel experience to customers in sync with emerging technologies. To achieve this, the client needed to improve application resiliency and availability by replacing the expensive and non-compliant legacy infrastructure and middleware of Self-Service Kiosks (SSKs) with modern microservices-driven architecture.
Coforge helped the client capitalize on the benefits of a microservice architecture with its Departure Touchpoint Program.
Over 18 months, Coforge proved reliable as a partner for the airline as it leveraged its industry expertise and earned the client’s trust. Coforge's initial scope was to design architecture services, microservices development, and program management. Subsequently, Coforge's contract was extended to include cloud environment management and setup and UX development for SSK check-in and boarding pass issuance. The modern microservices-driven architecture was initially set up at London Heathrow with eventual rollout to other airports worldwide.
Coforge set up the Departure Touchpoint program - a microservices-enabled modular approach to delivering self-service offerings. The solution was delivered in two phases:
- Phase 1 - Implementing a Single-Page Application delivered via a self-service touch-screen kiosk.
- Phase 2 - Implementing self-service rebooking, seat maps, and bag tag issuance.
Departure Touchpoint marked the airline’s first use of microservices. Due to this, Coforge is now uniquely positioned with a library of common services covering functionalities such as check-in, seat maps, boarding passes, rebooking, and bag tags. These microservices can easily be exploited by other modernization projects across the airline. Coforge provided application support, maintenance, and several feature enhancements, including rebooking, seat maps, boarding pass issuance, and language support by the end of the year.
Coforge successful delivery is evidenced by:
- the operation of parallel workstreams to deliver microservices and the user interface in 3-4 months,
- the execution of a closely coordinated program, with the client team and external suppliers,
- the consistent practice of agile for the delivery of the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and early and continuous delivery of feature releases every two months after the initial MVP, and
- the additional responsibility of configuring kiosk devices for another kiosk platform setup.
