Client Challenge
The ground handling system used by the client was rich in functionality but it lacked a strong technology platform to support its long-term business strategy. The client wanted a system that enables direct information transfer among carriers, government authorities like customs and municipality, shippers, consignees, cargo agents and freight forwarders all over the world. The system also needed to be linked to the call centers of the airline to provide online information to all parties involved. The existing legacy system thus had to be converted to one built on new-generation technologies that encompasses standardization and integration of all processes.

IBS Solution and Service Delivery Methodology
An iterative development model based on the Rational Unified Process was adopted as the development methodology for the new system. The entire system was developed in five iterations.
The new generation cargo handling system, was meant to be mission critical, technologically complex and significantly important for the client. IBS was involved in a shadowing exercise where IBS consultants experienced the day to day working of the business users and understood the business requirements completely. A documentation and signoff exercise ensured that there were no gaps in the requirements understanding. The project was developed based on an iterative model in order to efficiently manage and mitigate the project risks. Iterations were identified based on the impact of the identified risks and the entire project was completed in 5 separate iterations. Factory Acceptance and Site Acceptance Testing were carried out for every iteration. The project had efficient change management processes in place.
The support for acceptance testing and roll out to the production environment was provided by IBS consultants. IBS resources were also involved in Implementation activities such as Data Migration, Parallel Runs, Soft transition and Configuring the system to adapt to the existing business processes.

Technologies
The architecture of the system was based on the JEE framework with the core business logic residing in a JEE server in the form of Enterprise Java Beans. The user interacted with the application through Swing clients and through hand-held terminals.

Technical Features
• Multi hosting facility in a highly secured environment
• Suite of independent products which handles the cargo ground handling operations
• New Generation technologies
• Extensive audit support
• Built on an internal messaging framework
• Supports more than one warehouse, airport, city and country
• Generic external messaging product which communicates with cargo community systems and SITA lines
• Generic interfaces to external systems including government and other departments
• Supports manual and semi-automatic warehouses
• Supports the usage of RF terminals
• Supports different types of clients ranging from Java, Web to Hand held devices
• Supports different types of reports with a separate reports engine
• Interfaces with other communications modules such as fax server and SMTP server
• Independent Tracing product
• Independent Accounting product
• Generic charging and invoicing module

Business Benefits
• The IBS ability to build new generation systems benefited the client in introducing a product which was technologically superior to other products in the market.
• The products enabled the client to significantly reduce downtimes and reduce unit operating costs whilst improving the accuracy of information, operational productivity and eliminating paper-based communications.
• The iterative development model followed by IBS enabled the client to periodically assess the progress of the project and at the same time provide feedback and suggest changes to functionality where required, thus mitigating project risks at an earlier stage.

About the Client
The client is one of the largest, most innovative, most successful supplier of air travel services. The client’s operations started about 50 years back to provide ground handling services at a newly-opened International Airport. The client is the sole ground and passenger handling agent at this airport and operates the cargo terminal and three satellite terminals. Today our client is one of the largest travel organizations employing over 5000 staff. Their emphasis on innovation, quality products and excellence of service is unmatched in their line of service.

Highlights
• 100 man - years of development effort
• 14500 Function points
• 2 Million Lines of Code
• 17 man - years of Testing Effort
• 28 Business Use Cases
• 557 System Use Cases
• 468 Screens
• 190 Reports
• 999 Database Tables
• 18 Interfaces
• 400 Business Users
• 30 Business Transactions per second
• Peak Team Size of 90