Simplifying and enabling new-gen staff travel at Oman Air with iFly Staff
Our partnership with IBS Software has transformed the staff travel experience, simplifying processes to make it far easier for our employees to manage their personal and corporate travel. Navigating the intricacies of constantly updating travel policies represents a major win for the whole airline – from both an employee satisfaction and operational efficiency perspective.
Client Overview
Headquartered in Muscat, Oman Air offers connectivity to over 100 destinations globally, playing a vital role in transforming Oman into an important traffic hub in the Middle East.
Ongoing investments in new technologies, innovative products, and enhanced guest services have solidified its position as a premium, multi-award-winning airline of outstanding repute.
The Context
Oman Air relied on a complex, legacy system to manage staff travel requirements. The airline wanted to move away from a highly manually intensive and siloed ticketing system to a modern, self-service system that could integrate with HR applications and its PSS to improve the staff travel experience.
Key Challenges
Usability
The existing legacy system was neither user-friendly nor intuitive for airline staff. It did not adhere to modern usability standards of simplicity and few-click transactions. Additionally, the existing system did not support staff bookings on the go as it did not have a mobile solution or app.
Ease of access
The airline´s incumbent system for staff travel was an on-premises system built and operated on Oman Air's internal intranet infrastructure, so it did not have universal portability. This made booking operations tedious and highly dependent on internal infrastructure performance and availability.
Complex policy management
While staff travel needs evolved over time, the existing system did not provide a flexible travel rule configuration engine. Every change required technical customization of the entire solution, resulting in cost escalations and delays.
System management
Oman Air had to allocate a large team to maintain the existing on-premises system. Even so, it was not easy to scale the system when demand increased as lack of automation meant every change required manual re-configuration of the back-end infrastructure and associated resources.
The Solution
Oman Air selected IBS Software's iFly Staff solution to replace its ageing legacy staff travel system. iFly Staff´s SaaS model enabled the customer to quickly migrate its staff travel operations to a highly scalable cloud infrastructure and eliminate management overheads. Offering a seamless self-service ticketing and booking management experience, iFly Staff can be accessed from anywhere through the mobile app.
Oman Air´s decision to migrate to iFly Staff was made prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the disruption, iFly Staff was successfully implemented, completely remotely, within the stipulated timeframe. The engagement transformed staff travel for the entire airline group and was instrumental to improving staff morale. Automation of travel desk activities enabled Oman Air to successfully re-assign agents from the staff travel administration department to other core airline operations. From eliminating manual roadblocks and process inefficiencies to enabling effortless management on a consumption-based pricing model, iFly Staff became one of the key pillars in supporting Oman Air's larger digital transformation ambitions.
"The new staff travel system comes as part of Oman Air's ongoing efforts to enhance the benefits and facilities presented to employees. Self-service and mobile capabilities have significantly improved our employees' travel experience while reducing the workload associated with providing facilities." — Hilal Al Siyabi, Senior Vice President, People, Oman Air
The engagement witnessed iFly Staff achieving numerous feats at Oman Air like
- Supporting business and leisure travel needs for over 45,000 current and retired staff and their beneficiaries
- Reducing staff travel operations lead time by 50% by eliminating manual intervention and enabling a paperless environment
- More than 40% adoption on mobile to manage staff bookings, on the go
Key Results
Self-service booking platform
iFly Staff's self-service booking platform incorporates modern design elements and intuitive navigation, and its dedicated smartphone apps allow bookings on the go. The reporting module helps influence decisions about staff travel policies and procedures based on booking behavior. iFly Staff integrates with the customer's HR system and PSS, allowing automated information exchange to facilitate effortless ticketing. It also helps automate user profile creation and management, reducing out-of-sync profile data challenges.
Dynamic rules engine
iFly Staff's intelligent dynamic rules engine enables easy configuration of fare and travel policies, ensuring highly flexible, real-time, and compliant operations. Intuitive self-service capabilities make the booking process hassle-free for flight operations, recruitment, and onboarding.
SaaS competitiveness
iFly Staff´s SaaS model enables Oman Air to have a staff travel solution that is globally accessible and free from the airline´s restrictions on infrastructure performance. Hosted on a cloud platform, it offers unparalleled scalability and service availability, while ensuring secure information handling and accessibility control through SSO and Azure AD integration.
Future-proof solution
By joining the iFly Staff community, Oman Air benefits from a large pool of best practices and standards for staff travel operations. Furthermore, the airline will benefit from community upgrades while its users enjoy continuous experience improvements through ongoing road map releases.
