South African Airways Takes Off With Teradata; Region's Largest Airline Consolidates 13 Data Marts to Reduce Support Costs, Increase Performance and Gain Single View

Business Wire, April 26, 2005

SALZBURG, Austria -- Teradata, a division of NCR Corporation (NYSE:NCR), today announced that South African Airways (SAA) has chosen Teradata as its platform for enterprise data warehousing. The initial goal of the new half-terabyte data warehouse is to consolidate data from a number of SAA's existing data marts, while greatly increasing the performance of analysis by end-users. The new platform will serve as the foundation for a series of business improvement initiatives, in areas including revenue management, financial management and customer relationship management. E[acute accent]The new data warehouse, which is project-managed, implemented and supported by Teradata reseller Bytes Specialised Solutions, will also return significant cost savings to SAA by reducing the licensing and support costs involved in operating multiple data marts. E[acute accent]In the second stage of the project, the new Teradata(R) warehouse will act as a single repository for all passenger name records (PNR), as well as ticketing and departure-control data. SAA will also utilize the Teradata Travel Logical Data Model, designed to provide the structured framework for all data in the business. With this, SAA will be able to increase the consistency and quality of its PNR data and consequently improve the effectiveness of its data analysis. E[acute accent]For example, this single view of all data will enable SAA to establish and analyze passenger behavior such as show rates, allowing it to predict more accurately which passengers will turn up for flights and which ones will not. While most airlines use aggregated data to determine how they should book for a flight, SAA will be able to forecast demand for each flight with greater precision based on analysis of detailed PNR data. Combining this with ticketing and flown data also stored in the data warehouse will enable SAA to optimize profitability of their available seat capacity. E[acute accent]"If SAA are to compete with larger airlines in an aggressive market it is imperative that we maximize the value of our data assets to the business. Teradata has provided a cost-effective platform with which we can harness our data to improve revenue management, capacity planning and customer understanding," said Andy Hayward, chief information officer at SAA. "The new data warehouse has already enabled us to make significant savings in licensing and support costs, while vastly improving the speed of our data analysis capabilities. The increase in performance from the Teradata system has been phenomenal." E[acute accent]SAA will realize considerable operational savings by consolidating its current data-mart architecture, based on a series of department or function-specific databases, onto a single enterprise data warehouse. SAA has been able to decommission 13 separate data marts in favor of a single data warehouse. Research shows that the costs of supporting and maintaining a separate data mart averages between $1 million and $2 million per annum.(1) E[acute accent]In addition to PNR data, SAA also plans to consolidate customer, financial and operational data onto the data warehouse in the near future, to support further business improvement initiatives. Developing a single view of the organization in this way will, for example, enable the airline to better develop its customer relationship management strategy, by improving customer segmentation and valuation capabilities. E[acute accent]"South African Airways has successfully demonstrated that you do not need multiple terabytes of information to gain business advantage from data warehousing," commented Hermann Wimmer, Teradata vice president for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. "Not only will SAA make significant cost savings but our internal research has shown that by integrating passenger name record data for revenue-management analysis, SAA can increase revenues by up to 4 percent. This, combined with their journey towards a single view of their business, will put SAA at the forefront of mid-sized carriers."

E[acute accent](1) AMR Research (2002) - 'Five High-Value Infrastructure Projects for 2003', Bob Parker.

E[acute accent]About South African Airways

E[acute accent]South African Airways (SAA) is Africa's award-winning airline servicing more than 20 destinations across the continent. The airline, founded in 1934, makes it easier for passengers to connect to various destinations. Internationally, the airline has partnership with 11 airlines: British Midlands International, Cathay Pacific, Delta Airlines, El Al, Air France, Emirates, Lufthansa, Qantas Airlines, Ethiopian, Varig and Air Tanzania. SAA has applied to join Star Alliance, a network of more than 16 airlines who share facilities such as lounges, frequent flyer miles and connections to make travelling easier for passengers. E[acute accent]When SAA has been fully integrated into the alliance sometime in 2005, its customers will enjoy the following benefits: Access to 700 airports in 128 countries; access to over 550 lounges; the possibility of earning and redeeming frequent flyer miles or points on any member airline; world-wide recognition of status; priority reservation, standby and boarding for Star Alliance Gold members; priority baggage handling for Star Alliance Gold members, First and Business Class travellers and the most flexible round-the-world fares. E[acute accent]The partnership with other airlines allows SAA's passengers to reach more than 700 destinations across the world. SAA carries more than 6.5 million passengers a year and flies to more than 40 cities in 30 countries on six continents. Since January this Year, SAA has won eight awards, including Best African Airline, Best Domestic Airline, Best International Airline flying to South Africa, Best Cabin Crew in Africa, Best Airline Based in Africa.