Smartphones and mobile apps are making possible for millions of travelers to stay connected and productive as they travel the world. Customer-facing mobile apps are offered by the airlines with the perception that these apps will be the standard connection point for communicating with passengers. Many airline and travel services companies are introducing mobile apps for their own employees to develop the service level catered to global travelers.
Mobile apps have taken the consumer world by storm, and businesses are also following in the footsteps as the enterprise mobility market is predicted to achieve $360 billion by 2020. Corporations are viewing mobile as an instrument not just for client engagement, but for business process transformation as well. With its huge ratio of mobile operators, the travel industry has the capability to acquire vast benefits from mobile apps.
Just as several field services influenced industries, most employees in travel or transportation don’t have a desk. As 71% of employees access enterprise data on the mobile device for no less than two hours a week, many businesses have to provide an approach for 100% of their employees to access the active critical systems securely.
Authorizing mobile operators is critical in the airline industry. Flight stewards, pilots, mechanics, ticket and baggage agents and maintenance personnel are all tapping into mobile applications. According to the 2015 Airline IT Trends Survey by SITA, 55% of the airline personnel utilize smartphones for work tasks, and this will rise to 73% by 2018.
A great example of an organization utilizing and seeking benefits from enterprise mobility is the Alaska Airlines. With their strong mobile environment – the airline is considering productivity across the company including more on-time departures and arrivals, and better customer experiences. Alaska was the first airline to provide its pilots with iPads, an advanced step taken by the airline to fulfill employee needs.
With colossal manpower spread across geographies, time zones and languages, mobile apps provide an extensible approach for communicating with all types of workers in the travel industry. Whether they are based on terminals, on the jet ways, on the ground or in the air, using mobile devices issued to them by the airline or using a personal, bring your own device (BYOD), companies take advantage of a Mobile Application Management Solution to enable these mobile workers with key data and information.
Mobile apps are equalizing data for clients, offering data once limited to the airlines accessible to passengers through apps on their smartphones. As clients have smooth access to an increasing number of data – flight status, seat assignments, bag tracking – airlines will have to escalate their ability to make sense and rationally deliver this data to operators. Imparting employees with mobile apps to understand and act on this data will provide opportunities to prevent potential service disruptions, or cater premium service by notifying passengers to potential problems with their travel plans.
In few years, the circulation of actionable data will increase exceptionally as the cost of associating things to the Internet is dropping rapidly. Driven by the Internet of Things (IoT) transformation, airlines will gradually add sensors to mostly everything that moves. Rather than tracking airplanes and engines as it is done today, airlines will track an increasing amount of individual aircraft parts, service vehicles, and people. Tracking ground staff can boost the response times, but also notify employees to upcoming dangers based on their placement. For clients, sensors attached to luggage could stop the nightmare of lost baggage, letting the airlines to quickly find, route and deliver the missing luggage.
As the travel industry continues to expand with airlines leveraging technology to boost safety, service, and speed of travel, it is evident that mobile apps are required on both sides of the ticket counter. For every facility that is deployed for passengers, there needs to be equivalent or greater visibility and control of activities from mobile devices for all airline workers.
