Kevin Kinyanjui: How KQ is leveraging on technology

Tracking bags, personalizing offers, boosting customer loyalty, and optimizing operations are all goals by major airlines. But just like any other industry sector, it’s time the travel industry gets creative, not combative. Technology can be a highly versatile tool, something that helps companies be more responsive to change and become more prepared for the future.

Airlines have long seen value in this and have taken advantage of technologies like big data. The use of data analytics tools carries with it many benefits that have transformed the industry yet at the same time, it has brought about controversy with people asking questions over how exactly airlines are using that data.

Apart from Big Data, the travel industry has been a big user of technology both for serving customers and for automating its internal processes. On the customer facing side, airlines also use technology for reservations, ticketing and check-in, and are able to offer these online services for customers to do self-service.

In Africa, and Kenya in particular, mobile penetration stands at 83% according to Communications Authority of Kenya statistics, this is why many industries have taken to exploiting mobile technology.

As a result, companies like Kenya Airways (KQ), which is also among Africa’s largest airlines are aligning technology with their industry to reap high from service industry, which has become increasingly competitive and, therefore need to use technologies that are relevant, efficient and innovative.

Kevin Kinyanjui, KQ’s Information Systems (IS) Director and CIO updated CIO East Africa on how the airline was leveraging on technology ‘flying’ forward. He said that KQ was continuously improving its IT to continue supporting and enabling its business requirements.

“We are working on making these self-service features also available to customers through mobile apps. The KQ mobile app is available for Windows, iOS and Android devices and you can download this from the relevant store. We hope this will make the services to customers much closer to them and therefore more convenient,” he added.

New Innovations and technologies KQ is at the forefront when it comes to technology. Not long ago, its Baggage system, won the CIO100 2014 project of the year award. Kinyanjui says that was an onward trend that KQ was adopting.

“At KQ we are always looking to innovate and to continuously improve. This means that every year we have a number of innovation projects to bring in a number of new systems or improvements,” he said, adding that KQ also acquired a new platform to improve engagement with customers through a customer experience platform which is hosted by Oracle on a Cloud platform. The platform includes a centralised Customer Data Hub, a marketing automation module, a customer service module and a sales force automation module. “We have also made significant improvements to our website booking and check-in engine and you can enquire, reserve, pay for your ticket and checkin online for most destinations in the KQ network,” he noted.

“It is important to note that airlines have complex process architectures and because of this we have many business systems in a single airline as compared to other industries. At KQ we have over 60 business systems, and in larger airlines you even find hundreds of systems. It is quite a task for an airline IT team to keep its systems working and available 24 X 7 X 365 while at the same introducing new systems from time to time and also improving on existing ones. The KQ IT team is no different and it is a very busy environment for all in the team,” he stated.

KQ continues investing in technologies that bring customers closer and make it more convenient for them to travel. The airline is currently rolling out issuance of boarding passes through mobile phones so that customers do not have to print or carry a boarding passes to access the boarding gate. Instead the mobile phone screen will be scanned to allow the passenger through.

Partnerships is a great driving force

KQ has invested in Oracle Customer Experience platform to better interact with its customers. – With this, KQ has access to Oracle’s Eloqua for marketing, Fusion for sales and RightNow for service.

“The systems mentioned are part of the Oracle Customer Experience platform. Through this platform we are hoping to keep records and know our customer at an individual level. We hope to know what you are spending with us and what your preferences are. Through this we are able to do more targeted marketing that can give offers to our customer that are more relevant with their travelling habits and their likes. We hope with this platform we will have a closer relationship with our customers,” said Kinyanjui who revealed that the platform helps track and manage salesforce in engaging with travel agents and corporate customers.

Kinyanjui says KQ is actively outsourcing and has got key partnerships to drive that agenda. “For example we have outsourced all our service desk, field support to all users in Kenya, and even some of our system administration. Our web and mobile development team is also outsourced, as are some of our project co-ordination and management. Actually out of our 140 FTEs more than 80 are outsourced,” he noted and revealed that the other partnerships include working with Cellulant where the company launched a new mobile technology platform in 2012 enabling KQ’s customers gain access to enhanced interactive services. With that, KQ became one of Africa’s first airlines to deliver a mobile phone-based customer service information enhancement programme.

The ‘KQ Mobile’ service can be accessed through the short code *737#. With it, customers access information on flight status, timetable, cargo services, ticketing and can query their Msafiri Miles status. Powered by Cellulant, the KQ Mobile is accessible while roaming across all 56 KQ destinations. It also includes bulk SMS and USSD platforms.

In 2013, Vodacom Tanzania and KQ also signed a partnership where KQ customers were allowed to pay for their air tickets through M-PESA. The deal, was the first of its kind in Tanzania following similar partnerships between KQ and Safaricom in Kenya and MTN in Uganda.

Innovations have earned KQ global recognition

Having invested heavily in IT, KQ has gained global recognition thanks to outstanding innovations that have kept them ahead of the curve in the region.

“KQ as a leading African airline has invested heavily in technology both in serving customers, connecting with suppliers, connecting staff and in making internal processes more efficient. I believe KQ is in the leading category of airlines in Africa that has done this,” said Kinyanjui.

The KQ IT team has been recognised for their efforts and impact and have won some industry awards for example in 2010, KQ won the CIO 100 award for the Transport Sector in East Africa and later on in 2011, the Pride of Africa, was awarded Oracle Global Award for Travel & Transportation Sector for implementation and benefits realised from Oracle E-Business suite (ERP).

In 2013, the IT team at KQ won Computer Society of Kenya award for use of ICT in Air Transport Sector which was later followed by the CIO 100 award Overall Winner for East Africa in 2014, thanks to their Baggage System which utilises IT to promote passenger safety and reduce baggage mishandling. The system also provides visibility on passengers’ bag location throughout their journey and avails this information to KQ employees, ground handling agents and most importantly, its flight passengers via all customer touch points. IT uses wireless mobility, big data and complex event processing which enables association of data in real time. Working from a centralised database, the system receives and maintains all baggage related data and associated events such as checked in, loaded, offloaded from an airline Departure Control System, DCS.

The system reconciles data with information input from baggage scans along the path to the aircraft. It ensures that only bags for a particular flight are loaded and that only bags whose passengers have boarded the flight are included. Centralising the data offers real-time information to connection points as well as outstations, enabling key baggage information to be seamlessly shared consistently with visibility throughout the operation.

Security is key

Being big in cloud adoption and other technologies including Big Data and Analytics to help grow, KQ is also an obvious target of Cyber-attacks. Kinyanjui said that security is key for any organisation and not particularly IT as it was perceived before therefore need to have key considerations.

“KQ is adopting more use of Cloud providers especially for Software as a Service (SaaS). A good example is the recent implementation of our Customer Experience platform (customer hub, marketing, service and sales force automation) on the Oracle Cloud,” he said.

To ensure that you properly assess security risks, Kinyanjui pointed out a number of key areas to evaluate on:

• What is the User account management, Access controls and Identity management and does it adequately address my organisation’s needs?

• Does the vendor have adequate and timely disaster recovery? Will it take a few minutes to continue working in case of an outage for the Cloud platform?

• What is the SLA available to my organisation and what is the past record of the Cloud service provision?

• Are there comprehensive audit logs and trails to know what all the users have done in the system?

• Is there a data leakage prevention mechanism and is the data encrypted against non-authorised users? • What compliance standards is the platform and vendor meeting e.g. PCI, ISO27001?

Who really is Kevin Kinyanjui?

Started his career in 1996 as a software developer, then joined management consultancy.

In consultancy he grew a lot especially being trained through working in various industry sectors and a variety of African countries to help companies identify how technology could be utilised to harness their operational efficiencies – from finance, payroll, HR, supply chain and inventory management, sales and customer service.

After 6 years of consultancy, he also worked in the banking then moved on as a Head of IT at one of Kenya and East Africa’s leading manufacturing companies where he remained for another 6 years.

After that he returned to the banking sector for 2 years as CIO & IT Director and then in 2004 joined Kenya Airways as the Information Systems Director & CIO where he has remained to date.

As CIO Kevin Kinyanjui has the responsibility of ensuring that the IT strategy supports the business strategy as best as it can. This covers all the aspects of the business from the core operations, to customer service, to internal efficiencies.

He has to work with the IT team to enable the business meet its aspirations in terms of process efficiency, constantly improving its engagement with its customers and suppliers, and getting powerful insights from its data and information.

Mr. Kinyanjui oversees more than 60 business applications and more than 140 full time equivalents (FTE) or people managing and supporting all these applications. About half of the team is in operations and support of existing systems and the other half is in development and innovation.

He won the CIO of The Year award in 2014 which he says was a very special recognition to the IT team at KQ.

The article was the Cover Story for March 2016, to download click here