Strategic Re-Platforming web based e-commerce services for an American Airline leading more than 100% increase in web requests
Overview.
Striving to optimize and reduce the cost of operations and improve time-to-market, an American airline partnered with Coforge to develop and enhance a web-based e-commerce platform and provide testing services across all channels. The new platform has helped us deliver more value to the client in terms of performance improvement and reduced maintenance overheads.
Customers in the airline industry tend to outgrow traditional sales channels like e-mail and phone swiftly. To stay relevant, the client wanted to engage with its large customer base through a seamless web-based e-commerce platform. They wanted a high-performance platform as they were migrating to their current system. The platform had to be convenient, user-friendly, and personalized while still supporting a wide spectrum of existing capabilities and the latest web store features.
Other than the e-commerce platform, the client had set their eyes on:
Building user confidence
Limited browser/operating system support
DevOps, configuration, and release management support
Performance analysis and monitoring
Testing services and automation of regression suite
Administration tools for travel agents and inter-department collaboration
Consistent navigation with a common look and feel across all platforms
Proper functioning of system interfaces
The airline chose to partner with Coforge based on our two-decade experience in the airline industry and our capability and expertise in the domain.
Solution.
Coforge tailored a web-based e-commerce platform for the client. The dual-shore model was used for development and testing, with a fixed-capacity agile team for delivery. Our team followed the client’s architecture roadmap and ensured that the platform was aligned with OTA and SOAP compliance, and responsive web guidelines.
Other salient features of the solution included:
Out-of-the-box features of the solution components
Integration on SiteCore CMS platform and Enterprise Service Bus (NServiceBus)
Client side model view architecture based on AngularJS
Screen composition based on SiteCore to enable template-based amalgamation of dynamic and static content and handling of multi-lingual capabilities
Business transaction management across disparate systems using NServiceBus
Integration with Farelogix for business rules management
Integration with Sabre for Global Distribution System capabilities
Akamai CDN for static content caching across geographies to improve user response
Agile development with multiple streams of work in parallel
Excellent usability
Our team of quality assurance and testing experts was also involved in the project. They conducted functional and regression testing for all releases, link and navigation testing including page validation, and production cutover testing including sanity testing. We then carried out quality assurance of all patch releases to ensure that defects were not moved to the production system. The scope of testing also involved testing of kiosk check-ins. Printing of boarding cards with magnetic strip and barcode, printing of bag tags using bag-tag printer, use of card reader that accepted credit/debit/frequent flyer membership cards, and scanner for boarding documents, passports, visa, LPR, refugee card, and re-entry permit were also tested.
After seamless manual and automated testing of continuous releases in stringent timelines, we provided a smooth transition to the new system with minimal business interruption, identifying and managing risks. We gave a fair and holistic view of the project’s state of affairs after set intervals, helping identify performance bottlenecks, and delivering operational excellence to the client.
The Impact.
More Agile: We ensured consistent high-quality and quick delivery of new features and production releases.
More Automation: Automation of 72% of regression tests saved regression execution time and maximized coverage.
More Satisfaction: Web traffic increased from 9,00,000 requests per day to 2.2 million requests per day. A high degree of compliance to industry best practices was also ensured. Client satisfaction was achieved through application performance improvement after load testing and benchmarking, minimum overheads in application maintenance, defect-free application, and timely and accurate reporting.
More Expertise: We provided strong governance and robust risk, issue, and dependency management to the client.
