- India’s leading airline successfully completes its ERP modernization program ahead of schedule, by migrating from an on-premise legacy mainframe system to SAP Cloud, laying a strong foundation for its digital transformation journey.
- This is expected to bring significant improvements in Air India’s core enterprise functions such as Finance and Human Resources while fast-tracking its ability to roll out advanced capabilities in its Commercial, Operations, and Engineering areas.
New Delhi, April 10, 2023: Air India, India’s leading airline and a Star Alliance member, today announced the successful migration of its core Enterprise Resource Planning system using RISE With SAP, a tailor-made ERP software, bundled with transformation services, business analytics, and partner expertise that helps companies complete their personalized path to the cloud. This migration was a critical component in the larger digital transformation of Air India, with an impact on the modernization across business operations such as Finance and Human Resources as well as major functional areas such as Commercial, Operations, and Engineering.
One of the biggest challenges Air India faced in its comprehensive modernization journey was its outdated ERP system running on a decade-old mainframe and associated software. The migration and cutover of such critical systems are normally performed with backup and restore operations on an equivalent system. The unavailability of such a system anywhere in the world was a seemingly insurmountable hurdle. Team Air India worked in close collaboration with SAP to devise innovative solutions and techniques to overcome the challenge and eventually deliver a successful migration ahead of schedule. This migration paves the way for further modernization of Air India’s ERP system and the combination of other Group airlines into one entity.
“Air India’s vision is to emerge as the world’s most technologically advanced airline. A critical and foundational capability for this is a highly reliable, scalable modern ERP system that will drive significant improvements to our operational efficiency and assist us in creating a delightful customer experience. We identified the migration of our ERP System to a modern cloud infrastructure as one of the most important steps in this transformation journey,” said Air India’s Chief Digital and Technology Officer, Dr. Satya Ramaswamy. “We are glad to have completed this migration successfully, using a high level of creativity in overcoming the challenges that came our way. We are very grateful to the fantastic team from SAP that worked with us hand-in-hand to execute this transition flawlessly, and ahead of schedule.”
“Air India is one of the most iconic brands in the country, and we’re thrilled to deepen our long-standing partnership with them,” said Mr. Kulmeet Bawa, President & Managing Director, SAP Indian Subcontinent. “As they become a world-class airline and serve their global customers with a proud Indian heart, SAP’s cutting-edge cloud technology will enable the company to improve their customer experience, accelerate people transformation and develop into an intelligent, sustainable enterprise.”
About Air India:
Founded by the legendary JRD Tata, Air India pioneered India’s aviation sector. Since its first flight on October 15, 1932, Air India has an extensive domestic network and has spread its wings beyond to become a major international airline with a network across USA, Canada, UK, Europe, the Far East, South-East Asia, Australia, and the Gulf. Air India is a member of Star Alliance, the largest global airline consortium. After 69 years as a government-owned enterprise, Air India and Air India Express were welcomed back into the Tata group in January 2022. The present management at Air India is driving the five-year transformation roadmap under the aegis of Vihaan.AI to establish itself as a world-class global airline with an Indian heart.
Vihaan.AI is Air India’s transformational roadmap over five years with clear milestones. It will be focusing on dramatically growing both its network and fleet, developing a completely revamped customer proposition, improving reliability and on-time performance. The airline will also be taking a leadership position in technology, sustainability, and innovation, while aggressively investing in the best industry talent. Vihaan.AI is aimed at putting Air India on a path to sustained growth, profitability, and market leadership.
About the Tata Group:
Founded by Jamsetji Tata in 1868, the Tata group is a global enterprise, headquartered in India, comprising 30 companies across ten verticals. The group operates in more than 100 countries across six continents, with a mission ‘To improve the quality of life of the communities we serve globally, through long-term stakeholder value creation based on Leadership with Trust’.
Tata Sons is the principal investment holding company and promoter of Tata Companies. Sixty-six percent of the equity share capital of Tata Sons is held by philanthropic trusts, which support education, health, livelihood generation, and art and culture. In 2020-21, the revenue of Tata Companies, taken together, was $103 billion (INR 7.7 trillion). These companies collectively employ over 800,000 people. Each Tata company or enterprise operates independently under the guidance and supervision of its own board of directors. There are 29 publicly listed Tata enterprises with a combined market capitalization of $314 billion (INR 23.4 trillion) as on December 31, 2021. Companies include Tata Consultancy Services, Tata Motors, Tata Steel, Tata Chemicals, Tata Consumer Products, Titan, Tata Capital, Tata Power, Tata Communications, Indian Hotels, Tata Digital, and Tata Electronics.
