Digital transformation of Bangalore airport

Bangalore International Airport Limited (BIAL) operates Kempegowda International Airport, India’s third busiest airport. BIAL will partner with Datamatics Global Services Ltd. (DGSL) “to strengthen and streamline BIAL’s core processes by digitizing its assets and setting up integrated workflows for seamless flow of information across multiple stakeholders and departments”. Bijon Mullick, Senior Vice President – Sales, India, Middle East & APAC, talks about the transformation plans and the future of air travel.

In brief, what is the basic digital transformation plan that DGSL has for BIAL?

Datamatics will automate more than 170 processes in various departments of BIAL, which includes digitizing its core processes and setting-up integrated workflows. This will enable the client to inter-link various departments’ and allow easy information exchange, increased transparency and better collaboration across the enterprise. Datamatics will implement Integrated Document Management system and Business Process Management Solutions. All the solutions will be deployed and managed on cloud.

What benefits of digitization can be expected when the transformation plan is complete?

Digitization of documents and processes are important steps in the digital journey of any organization. Every important step that an enterprise takes towards digital transformation ultimately percolates to the end customer either through real time access to information, personalized treatment, or seamless customer experience.

On the part of BIAL, it will help them towards -
• Paperless Digital Office: Minimal manual transfer/storage of physical documents unless needed for regulatory processes. This will also lead to secure document storage.
• Easy capture & access of documents: Enterprises can easily capture, digitize and store information and can access them anytime anywhere on the cloud.
• Digitized integrated workflows: Easy sharing, collaboration and exchange of information among multiple stakeholders. This also involves easy approvals on a digital platform.
• Process Efficiency: Digitization will optimize processes and bring in more efficiency and better operational resilience.

What are the future applications of Artificial Intelligence-Machine Learning in air travel?

AI and ML will play an important role in the aviation sector. Indian aviation industry is one of the fastest growing globally and expected to be the third largest in the world in terms of passenger traffic. In the wake of such increasing passenger traffic, AI-ML will be helpful to get meaningful insights from the massive unstructured data collection at the airports. NLP can fast process information, structured or unstructured data without any error. This plays important in understanding the passenger’s preferences and delivering them personalized and customized services. Using chatbots/virtual agents to interact with a passenger and solve his queries and pass it on to a customer service agent when required. It can also analyze vast data and correlate multiple factors like weather conditions, airport congestion to bring more accurate predictions in terms of flights delays, etc.

The biggest advantage would be in terms of boosting security measures. With increasing passenger traffic and multiple security layers – airports are struggling not only to keep their operational costs in check but also to keep passengers happy who often complain about such cumbersome checks leading to delays. Computer Vision and ML can make baggage screening and identifying harmful objects flawless. Furthermore the computer can continuously learn and identify certain patterns based on which it can raise a flag of concern for a particular passenger or baggage.

In the future how can international airports leverage technologies like facial recognition and Internet of Things (IoT) to make the passenger experience more seamless?

Airports have huge scope to automate and adopt new age technologies and to add value at every stage of the customer journey. From chatbots to self-service kiosks, biometric authentication to automated baggage screening, real-time updates to passengers and immersive media for entertainment at the airport – technology can be used throughout to engage customers and provide frictionless travel.

However, adoption of these technologies is still at a nascent stage in India. Facial Recognition and Biometric authentication can make the security checks more fool- proof. Similarly it would add convenience for passengers as they may not have to go through multiple security check-in or carry their social identity cards or even passports. With connected devices, or IoT, passengers can better navigate through the airports or locate their luggage. For airports, it means better management of airport equipment, facilities management and better traffic management.

At the core, we must understand all these technologies are interconnected whether IoT, AI, ML, Predictive Analytics, Biometrics or Computer Vision and behind it is a huge pool of data collection and these technologies are allowing you to harness the data for delivering enhanced customer experience, improved operational and cost efficiency .

What are your offerings in the emerging technology space?

As a mid-tier company, we have a broad portfolio of offerings in the IT Services and BPM space. While we are offering services in emerging technology space like Cloud, Mobility, AR & VR, we also have an integrated suite of intelligent automation products. Datamatics RPA product TruBot is well-known in the market and has been recognized by Gartner Peer Insights as one of the highly preferred products by customers. Datamatics has its own AI engine, TruAI. We also have an intelligent data capture solution TruCap+. On top of it, we have an analytical and BI platform, TruBI which help clients to slice & dice data and get meaningful insights from their business investments.