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TCS Innovation Labs – Travel and Hospitality

 

We enable a collaborative platform for incubating cost-effective solutions across business processes specific to the Travel and Hospitality (T&H) domain. The lab enables an “Innovation Continuum” as part of which the “innovation pipeline” is set off by the business challenges faced by various customers in the travel and hospitality domain. We work on diverse solutions that are aligned to current technology and business trends, and often abstract similar challenges/solutions from other business verticals/domains.

 

TCS customers examine the solutions developed by the lab, deploy them in real-time business environments and provide their feedback that is then incorporated towards further enhancing these solutions. Further, the lab seeks to propagate an Innovation Culture across the customer’s enterprise by helping them establish their exclusive  innovation labs and facilitate innovation harvesting from among its business users. Such customer-driven labs are granted with extended access to our lab and, by extension, the entire TCS Co-Innovation Network (COINTM).

 

The Travel and Transportation domain is a key TCS vertical that contributes to earning 4.5% of TCS’ total revenues. The 3000-associate strong vertical serves customers such as British Airways, Qantas, Singapore Airlines, Virgin Atlantic, Worldspan, SITA, Hawaiian Airlines, Saudi Arabian Airlines, American Airlines and United Airlines among others.

 

Highlights for 2009-2010

   

Research

 

  • Intelligence Driven Process Framework will enable business users to acquire consolidated and real-time status of different business events and provide simulation capabilities of different scenarios. It will extend the current application framework with a Natural Language Processing (NLP) enabled  Virtual Agent and Actionable Dashboards.
  • Service Enabled Airports framework will leverage emerging trends of tagging and identifying, using technologies like Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and Bluetooth. It will allow users to access Airport Applications using channels like mobile phones and portable self-assist devices.
  • Real Time Slot Management framework will enable the Container Shipping Industry to dynamically resolve the challenges encountered in managing shipping slots at ports and shipping lanes through real time ship positions and forecasted cargo arrivals. It will leverage the pre-defined analytics around percentage of utilization, missed / loose / tight connects, and booking build-up maintained to support business actions.
  • Ship Deployment Optimization framework will automate calculations to be made to create visibility between different deployment scenarios, and facilitate the deployment section to take the right decisions. The right decision revolves around the lowest cost of deployment taking into account all associated cost elements.
  • Container Tracking framework will combine the identification through RFID along with container management systems and communication technologies like GPRS, and satellite links. It will enable shipping lines to monitor container remotely and control the different operating parameters like refrigeration, access control.
  • Contactless Check-in and Check-out framework for the hospitality industry will allow hotel guests to check-in using their mobile phones and access their rooms using the wireless capabilities available on the phone. It will leverage wireless connectivity to the Guest to offer several value added services and simplify some of the activities being performed through other systems. 

 
Solutions and Tools

 

The lab has evolved a series of application frameworks that help airliners innovate various business processes. These frameworks seek to address actual business requirements and are modeled around emerging technologies. These frameworks comprise components that are implemented in typical airline environments and are tested for their performance and integration with other airline systems and applications.

Some of our airline solution frameworks:

Travel Service Platform :Reference architecture to enable the development of a comprehensive SOA-based middleware solution for enhanced connectivity among in-house airline systems and external systems. 

Travel Concierge: Personalized, secure, mobile wallet application intended to streamline communications between the airliner and travellers.

Crew Power: Provides near real-time information to crew on passenger preferences and their itineraries to offer personalized service

Real Insights & Real-time Loyalty: On-demand Enterprise Analytics platform with strong predictive capabilities to manage profitable customer relationships using value-based segmentation of customers

Maxi Marketing: Marketing platform addressing the need for intelligent, personalized marketing programs in airlines

Intelligent Desktop: Next-generation, context-aware desktop application for airline reservation agents to offer personalized customer interaction with context-based customer information