Increased competition, a growing number of passengers, and managing complex airport operations – the challenges commercial aviation faces today insistently call for implementing digital technologies. Historically, aviation was the first industry to catch the wave of digitization in the 60s-70s as it pioneered the adoption of commercial aviation software for ticket distribution. The second wave of digitization promises to bring much more to the table than merely facilitating sales and marketing.
In fact, according to Accenture, digital transformation is expected to generate $305 billion in revenue for commercial airlines by 2025. In addition, air fleet and management digitization are expected to “generate benefits valued at $700 billion for customers and wider society through a reduced environmental footprint, improved safety and security, and cost and time savings for consumers.”
Through analyzing behavioral data, airline companies can deliver personalized marketing campaigns, improve customer experience, and boost ancillary sales. Real-time monitoring could enable them to immediately respond to emergencies in case of flight cancellations or weather-related disruptions.
With the accessibility of broadband mobile connection and wifi on board, communicating with passengers could become easier than ever – the airline can send notifications about flight and baggage status, inform passengers about waiting time during border control, etc. Improved data-driven customer service would have a positive impact on customer relationships.
By leveraging data analytics, airline companies could predict passenger flow, analyze customer’s sentiments and satisfaction level, predict revenue from opening new routes, and avoid fight disruptions by accurately forecasting weather conditions.
Sadly, even though some airports do experiment with facial recognition technologies, robot luggage carriers, and automated check-in systems, most aviation software development still revolves around ticket sales. So how come aren’t airlines taking full advantage of digital transformation – yet?
Challenges Of Tech Adoption In Commercial Aviation
In spite of the apparent benefits, the digital transformation of commercial aviation involves many challenges. Any technological changes would be large-scale and irreversible, and the cost of every mistake is high. Below is the list of major obstacles that stand in the way of tech adoption in commercial aviation.
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Lack of insight into passenger preferences
By 2035, the number of air passengers globally is projected to reach 7,2 billion, and as customer numbers increase, their demands are evolving as well. Gen Z digital natives are growing up and becoming active travelers, bringing forth the need for personalization, onboard infotainment, and non-disruptive connectivity. Moreover, customers from emerging markets like Korea, China, and Indonesia, and the increasing number of older customers are choosing air travel. Companies need to tap into customer preferences to bring them the best services and stand up to the competition.
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Legacy technologies and systems
Using outdated infrastructures and technologies as well as a commitment to long-term GDS suppliers is a severe roadblock to digitally transforming commercial aviation. Replacing legacy systems is a lengthy and painstaking process; it also makes sense to embark on this journey only if it would be justified commercially.
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Lack of in-house expertise
Too often, though, in-house technical staff is unaware of current opportunities. Overcoming this obstacle lies in keeping your hand on the pulse when it comes to new possibilities and technologies and assisting your tech staff in adopting new approaches instead of legacy skill sets.
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Lack of talent
Adopting a new mindset and becoming data-driven requires enhancing existing teams with qualified experts in emerging technologies. Admittedly, they are in high demand, have to be convinced to switch to a new workplace, and their salary expectations tend to be quite high.
How Tech Talent Sourcing Can Help Aviation Go Digital Faster and Cost-Effectively
For aviation companies, sourcing tech specialists beyond the local pool prove to be an actionable way of bridging the talent gap and helping deal with the numerous challenges. Here’s how IT sourcing opens the pathway to digital transformation and helps aviation industry players jump fast on tech bandwagon and improve their bottom-line while keeping improving customer experiences.
Access to broader talent pools and tribal knowledge
In regions like Eastern Europe, tech talent is in abundance, and the market is saturated with qualified developers. While, admittedly, some specialists are in higher demand than others, assembling a team for aviation software development would still be much easier than hiring developers locally.
Unlike developing custom-built solutions in-house, the outsourced digital transformation of aviation has the potential to open the doorway to greater accumulated expertise, especially if you choose to partner with the company with relevant expertise and a good portfolio of relevant projects.
Shorter time-to-hire (TTH)
Because of the higher availability of talent in popular outsourcing locations, headhunting and hiring software developers will take less time. In Ukraine, for example, the average time-to-hire for tech-related professions ranges from 4 to 10 weeks, while in the United States and the United Kingdom, the shortest time-to-hire starts at seven weeks, on average. Shorter time-to-hire spells faster time-to-market, which, in today’s agile business environment, is a serious competitive advantage. Also, your total cost per hire will depend largely on your TTH metrics: the longer the latter, the higher the former.
Labor cost arbitrage
The average annual salary of a senior software developer in traditional offshore destinations like Ukraine is $40,500 gross (including taxes and benefits!), according to Payscale. Surely, a lot will depend on experience and qualification. Still, in the United States, the average base pay for a senior software developer is as high as $129,328 per annum, as per Glassdoor.
Apart from offering you the set of skills and methodologies for bringing your projects to life, aviation software outsourcing is an excellent means of reducing the expenses you would usually face if you choose to build aviation solutions in-house to a reasonable minimum.
Aviation Software Outsourcing Case Story
The case story below illustrates the benefits of outsourced digital transformation of aviation. Let’s now examine in more detail how one of Canada’s leading providers of digital document distribution solutions uses its dedicated team in Ukraine to improve software delivery to aviation companies.
OBDS (Onboard Data Systems) is a Canada-based provider of digital documentation solutions for business and commercial aviation. The company’s mission is to facilitate digital transformation by helping aviation companies get rid of time-consuming paperwork and increase efficiency, security, and customer satisfaction.
An established company with Cessna, Pilatus, Dassault, and Bombardier among their long-term clients, OBDS needed assistance in application and server development and faced obstacles in hiring in-house specialists. As an alternative, the company’s CEO decided to leverage software development outsourcing and found a Ukraine-based provider 8allocate to partner with.
Having conducted a discovery session and evaluates project needs, 8allocate’s team suggested the technology stack that would best meet the client’s requirements: ASP.NET + C#, Lucene.NET, ASP.NET Core, and SyncFusion Essential WPF.
The extended software team worked alongside the OBDS in-house team on defining the scope of web development and mobile app’s upgrade. The in-house team mapped out the implementation schedule and deliverables for the outsourced team to follow when planning dev project.
Using a sustainable communication framework (daily emails, Skype audio and video conferences plus Kanban boards ) allowed 8allocate team to support the client-side specialists efficiently, to plan and execute the development, and implement the solution that meets the client’s most sophisticated technology needs.
The 8allocate team implemented critical upgrades to outdated web and mobile flight documentation management applications. Strong understanding of the OBDS requirements, efficient use of methodologies, ongoing communication between the teams, and consistent efforts to incorporate client feedback contributed to the overall project’s success.
The new code was tested by offshore developers and upon successful QA, the code was pushed to the chosen continuous integration (CI) and deployment platform. The final round of QA was performed after the deployment.
Having used an experienced outsourcing provider with the high work ethic and coding standards, OBDS could boost the overall efficiency of its in-house software development efforts and reduce time to market by significantly reducing time to hire tech talent for their open vacancies.
At the moment, OBDS uses its offshore team as a standalone unit to support and maintain its Windows mobile and server apps and assist with creating new 3D models and building a new client-tailored app to house aircraft maintenance manuals for pilots.
“Their developers are relatively autonomous and listen carefully to our specs. They find weaknesses in our specifications that our previous developers have not found and will bring it to our attention. They provide the best possible code, and their QA is on point. I can rest easy when I hand a project over to them,” says Roger Sarazin, VP of Products and Services at OBDS.
Final Thoughts
Advanced predictive analytics, IoT-enhanced fleet management solutions, integrated airport management systems, and robotics seem just one step away.
Yet, given the complexity involved in digitally transforming commercial aviation – from fleet management application development to onboard ancillary sales, leveraging strong external expertise is a keynote to success. Meeting tougher challenges requires diversified approaches – like tapping into the pool of global talent, enhancing in-house teams with international developers, and fostering an interchange of ideas and experience through open communication.
