Response to Singapore International Airlines (SIA) AM

Su

RAHUL DAS
ARITRA CHAUDHUR
FAHIM BIN BASHEER
RUBAL BAGDE
HARI KISHAN SUDHEER

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page

Introduction .......................................................................................................................

Achievements ............................................................................................................

Problem Statement .......................................................................................................

Consulting
Project Timelines ........................................................................................................

Approach to IT Governance........................................................................................

Team Structure............................................................................................................

Pricing Structure .........................................................................................................

Outsourcing Decisions ...............................................................................................

Transition Management
Transition Objective........................................................................................

Transition Project Management......................................................................

12

Implementation
Application Incident and Problem Management.........................................................

14

Incident Management Process Flow...........................................................................

15

Preventive Management.............................................................................................

16

Customer Management...............................................................................................

16

Component Management...........................................................................................

16

References

............................................................................................................

18

Introduction to Penta Consulting Services

Penta Consulting Services has been involved in the IT Consulting
Business for the past 30 years and has got large client list with many
Fortune 500 clients such as Exxon Mobil, ADP, General Motors, UHG, Walmart to name
a few. With our focused experience in the domain of IT Consulting, we have pioneered
several projects, with a drive to improve business and IT alignment. We have over 200
verified knowledge and outsourcing partners to cater to the needs of 60 different
industries including Airlines management systems, Industrial Management Systems
and others. We have an employee base that is 110,000-strong with experience in
multiple functions for providing stellar Business Process Outsourcing.
We have worked consistently with major airlines such as Turkish Airlines and British Airways
in the past to implement Application Management Services and provided Consultancy
Services to cater to their growing business needs. Our services have reduced the IT cost
structure of most of our clients by an average of at least 20% across small and large
enterprises, with larger saves being realized for larger organizations. We have abided by the
Service Level Agreements, agreed upon consistently, with our performance in 2015, allowing
us to reach 99.1%, which is a testament to the quality and performance of our teams.

Achievements That set us apart

Incidence Management Leadership

This has been a key performance area, where we have been domain leaders with
experience of execution of more than 1000 projects over the past 14 years when we
entered this area, which has allowed our firm to engage in learning and identifying
major process improvements. These have been adopted as consistent standards,
which we improve on during our semi-annual evaluation cycle. Our focus on ensuring
stringent process guidelines and focus on adherence of SLAs have made us the
leaders in Incidence Management Outsourcing Services with an unparalleled
satisfaction rate of 98% across 342 clients across 16 countries.

Training Excellence
We understand that our employees are the core competencies that you look at when
you choose us for your projects. We have spent our many years in the industry, to
frame and continuously develop a fast-paced training program that keeps our
employees ready to work on the latest platforms and technologies relevant in the
industry. In addition, we always have specific teams trained in legacy technologies, to
support older systems and to support during transition to newer technology systems.
We have been leaders in training and with our focus on creating a fast adapting
workforce; we have been able to institute fast growth. We have a large, capable
employee base capable of taking up challenges across various industries and
platforms.

Rapid Scaling
We understand that with the changing needs of the industry, you may need to tap
into a larger workforce that can adapt to your organizations need at a moments
notice. We are equipped with the requisite standardization of processes and a large
employee base. The standardization allows us to undertake any new implementation
2

and support processes with a smooth transition, leveraging years of experience in

the domain. Additionally, we have a workforce whose skills can be leveraged along
with those of our trusted partners, allowing us to serve fast scaling businesses across
multiple functions and processes. We have adhered to SLAs 99.1% of the cases in
2015, highest across the industry, although we regularly cater to such flexible
allocation of work-force which indicates our expertise in the area.

Leaders in IT Consulting
Over the past 30 years, we have created a niche for ourselves in the IT Industry, by
instituting many firsts across different categories. We have ensured that we have
kept pace with the changing industry requirements to cater to our clients changing
needs. Focusing on our clients needs to deliver tailored solutions has always been
our strength. This can be attested to by the receipt of The Best IT Consulting
Leadership Team and The Best IT Consulting Firm awards instituted by industry
body, ITCG.

Problem Statement
Singapore Airlines is an organization with huge global presence. It provides varied services
and functionalities to consumers and large businesses. To support all these function they do
have an IT division which has a sophisticated level of applications and systems. Currently
they have around 200+ IT Applications which is a mixture of custom built in-house
applications and commercially off-the-shelf products (ASP / Black-box applications). These
applications are running on standalone & distributed platforms and use variety of
technologies includes J2EE, e-Commerce, Middleware (Tibco), SAP ECC Suite, Cognos,
BOXI, Microsoft Sharepoint, Intalio Suite, Adobe LifeCycle, IBM Websphere Portal & WCM,
Mainframe, Oracle, DB2, Lotus Notes, etc. This plethora of applications run on different
systems and technologies makes the whole IT division inefficient and ineffective as there is a
lot of redundant data involved. It also takes a long time to retrieve data from different
systems. The current problem statement in front of Penta Consulting is to suggest an
integration plan for these systems i.e. to find a suitable vendor to whom SIA can outsource
almost all its IT functions, the cost involved in this job and timeline for action. Outsourcing
and vendor management includes deciding which functionalities or systems to outsource
and which one to retain. \
Let us look at the strategic grid for the IT division

Majority of the functions fall under the Support mode as expected and there are a huge
number of functionalities are also under factory mode.

Consulting:
Project Timelines

The project timelines for the different projects were decided based on the nature of the
project Consulting and Implementation. The Consulting Projects included Application
Portfolio review, Transition Management, Support Model and IT Governance. The timelines
were prioritized based on the complexity of the project and the time for consultation of the
period. Due to the importance of conducting the Application Portfolio review, since it has
implications on the strategic fit between Business and IT Goals, it was prioritized with a 3
month timeline. Transition Management is a long and complicated process that requires a
4

larger scope of study and time to be completed and was going to be conducted over a
period of 1 year. IT Governance structure and mechanism would be set up based on the 6
month timeline as it would lead to better structure for implementing IT projects that are more
suited as per the business alignment and would have impact on SIAs future in the short term
as well as long term.
The Implementation projects included Component Management, IT Security & Audit, Testing
Services, Black Box & Altea (L1 Support), Application Incident Management, Customer
Management and Application Minor Enhancements. The different projects were based on
the complexity of the project and implementation time for completion of the project. The
length of the project implementation is based on our experience from similar projects
completed earlier and based on the priority of the project, the timelines have been decided.
Due to the importance of the projects, Application Incident Management and Customer
Management were given a 6 month timeline to be implemented for SIA along with Black Box
and Altea (L1 Support). Testing Services and Application Minor Enhancements would be
setup and fully readied to capacity due to the transition period for knowledge transfer
between teams that would require a period of 9 months.

Approach to IT Governance

The approach to IT Governance Structure focuses on identifying primary stakeholders for

the inputs of the decision making processes including decision makers and input providers.
This allows SIA to have a cohesive decision making structure that is accountable for the
sanction of new IT Projects and evaluating the budget of existing IT projects.
SIA has highly mission critical IT Projects and have turnaround projects in conjunction with a
number of support projects that are available. These projects will need the approval and
decisions of the Board of Directors and CXOs from SIA.
5

IT Duopoly structure will be used in order to take decisions, that will take care of the
business and IT alignment. This structure will be more widely used to understand the impact
of IT structures that have high impact to business alignments.
Inputs for most of the projects can be acquired from IT Monarchy and Business Units
(Federal) in order for the decision makers to take up the necessary steps.

Team Structure

A team structure will be created to ensure accountability and easy access to the proper
points of contact between the representatives of SIA and the project team from Penta.
The team structure was created to help improve the communication between SIA and Penta
during the long-term. The structure has been created to separate two functions Consulting
and Project Implementation. Two Project Managers will be assigned to work on the
Application Management Services and the Consultancy project, who will report to the Penta
Account Manager (an Assistant Vice President from Penta). The Account Manager will act as
a liaison for any communication between the SIA and Penta, and will take care of key
accounts.
The Project Teams for Implementation have been created based on the different projects
that are being instituted under the RFP, which will each have Project Team Lead, who will
take care of the individual projects that will be managed under a Project Manager. The Lead
Consultant will be manage the Consultancy Projects which will be worked on by a team of
Associate Consultants.

Pricing Structure
As per our experience with previous projects with large enterprises in the Airlines Industry,
we have estimate the amount of man-hours it would take to implement similar projects in the
domain and have competitively priced the hourly rate based on the nature of the work
Consultancy and Implementation.
Based on the RFP, man-hours were calculated taking into consideration the average manhours that could be experienced based on the formulation mentioned below. Unified costs of
$125 per hour of work for implementation and $300 per hour of Consulting Work, which are
standard rates charged by our firm.

Based on the man-hours estimated above and the man-hours for similar jobs, we have seen
for companies in the Airlines Industry, we have estimated the following breakdown and cost,
based on the unified cost system in use at Penta.

In addition to the yearly costs of $25.15 million for Implementation and Consulting Costs,
one time charges of $1.5 million will be charged as first-time implementation charges to
account for the setup costs and instituting the process & team.

Outsourcing Decisions
As a professional organization that follows sound steps we first worked on confirming why
SIA needs to outsource. This was done by looking at the Resource based view of SIA. A firm
is made different from one another based on its unique resources and capabilities. Normally
a firm would want their resource and capabilities to have qualities like

Should be valuable
Should be Rare
Inimitable
Non Substitutable

When the resource and capability of a firm doesnt incline with its strategy, then its high time
we outsource functionalities or include an external vendor to help the firm align with it
strategy. Shown below is the resource based view of SIA

Currently we have a plethora of applications that work on different technologies and servers.
The company wants to streamline its IT applications and club it into one common technology
and base so that it can work smoothly and provide a great experience to SIAs customers.
This does call for SIA to get a vendor who can take care of all its applications.
Previously we have already shown you the scope of this project which includes both
consulting and implementation level works. Out of this we analyze the implementation level
functionalities to see which all could be outsourced and which all could not. We critically
analyze whether all these functionalities under a microscopic view. The outsourcing decision
is a function of the companys core value chain activity and importance or priority of that
functionality.

IT Security and Audit involves adhering to SIAs information security requirements and it is a
high priority item and depending on a third party to maintain your security requirements will
be a bit risky. So this functionality should be done by SIA itself. Also the Application Incident
Management involves activities like solving application incidents that has serious impact on
operations. Implementation of permanent solution to such problems is also part of this
function. This too should be kept with the company rather than outsourcing. The rest is not
8

much critical functions and can be outsourced to a single vendor who will have the capability
to handle all these applications. This would help SIA to focus on the important things. The
outsourcing of these low priority applications will also reduce SIAs operational expense by
cutting down the redundant and grandfathered systems. This can also make the process and
response time faster.

Narrowing down to just a single vendor rather than an array of vendors can improve the
coordination between SIA and the vendor for ticket resolution and any other outsourced
activities.

Transition Management
Transition Objectives:
Put simply, the objective of transition is to transfer the delivery of business process services
from an internal function to an external service provider. However, the client organization is
about to embark on a journey of change; it needs to know in which direction to head, how to
measure progress and how to know when it has reached its destination.
A clear understanding of the objectives for the change is required if the program is to be
planned and executed effectively. These objectives should be aligned to the business needs
of the organization. In many cases such objectives are articulated only in financial terms
for example, staff savings.
Although financial objectives are important, they are not the whole story. Focusing on just
the financial dimension can lead to sub-optimization and ultimately failure to provide the
expected benefits. Broadening the scope of objectives to provide a holistic view of the
required change enables the organizations affected function to align itself to its customers,
9

deliver its services effectively, build its own culture and identity, and also meet the financial
targets.
Implementing any change program within an airlines company is a challenge. Outsourcing a
business process to an external service provider adds yet another layer of complexity to
such a program. The following figure depicts the main areas of change to be addressed.

Global vs
Regional
Culture

HR

Business
Continuit
y

Process

Roles &
Responsi
bility

Technolo
gy
Service
Levels

Global vs. regional:

Among global companies, the selection of an outsourcing service provider is the often the
result of a global project, yet the implementation has to be conducted locally. Depending on
the organizational structure and culture, this can create tension between global and regional
leadership. Strong local management of the transition is a key success factor in realizing the
anticipated benefits, but this endeavor needs to be viewed within an overarching framework.

Human Resources:
The transition to an outsourced process model obviously has a major impact on the
organizations staff both permanent and contract. The agreement with the service provider
may involve staff transfer, or it may be left to the client organization to redeploy or make
redundant their staff.
Process:
Global or multinational organizations rarely have common, standardized business processes
across all geographies. Typically regional and local variations of a so-called standard are in

10

use, often with local variations in IT support. The very fact that the process is being
outsourced is often the first indicator that process standardization and quality issues exist.
The contract with the service provider will include a description of the services to be
delivered, usually couched in the what rather than the how style. Therefore, details of how
the process is currently performed are normally excluded from the contract. The agreement
may also include obligations for the service provider to improve or transform the process to a
common, standardized best-practice.
However much due diligence is conducted by the service provider before the contract
signing, it is always a surprise for the provider to discover the extent of process variation and
the difficulty in creating a new common process. With that in mind, the transition plan must
include time for comprehensive knowledge capture and process documentation by the
service provider.
Roles and Responsibilities:
The transition will have profound effects on organizational roles and responsibilities. These
will primarily affect the function being outsourced (e.g., the finance department), but will also
have a ripple effect on roles within other areas of the organization.
Managers of the affected staff members will no longer have line responsibility; instead they
will be receiving the service from the new provider. Managers will not be able to just ask
their staff about operational issues as they did previously, because there now is an arms
length relationship with the service provider. Old relationships have been broken and as
a result managers often feel disenfranchised.
New roles are now required to interface with the service provider and create added value to
the business. The extent of the change affecting retained staff cannot be underestimated.
Extensive training and coaching may be necessary to impart new skills and competencies.
Service Levels:
It is unlikely that formal service levels existed between an internal department and its
customers. However, one of the major performance management tools for business process
outsourcing is a formal service-level framework. The new contract will describe how service
levels should be managed and usually will include an initial set of service-level definitions
and targets.
The challenge for both client and service provider is to implement these in a practical and
meaningful way. Although the client will have various contractual remedies in the case of no
or poor measurement, in reality it is often difficult to implement such measurement from the
time service delivery by the provider commences.
Difficulties arise through lack of clarity of service level definition, lack of appropriate
process/system triggers that can be used to start/stop measurement, regional
process/system variations and simply the fact that service levels have never been measured
before.
It is important to stress that it must always be the service providers responsibility to set up
measurement tools and produce quality reporting. The client may help with access to
internal systems, etc., but must not allow itself to be dragged into doing the service
providers work.

Technology:
In most cases, the business process under review will be supported by technology of some
form. This may range from a single integrated, global enterprise resource planning (ERP)
system through various regional ERP versions to stand-alone software applications.
11

Accessing this technology from the providers delivery centers is necessary for service
delivery this is the easy part of the transition.
It is likely that the service provider will plan to implement workflow technology within its
delivery center to support its control of the process. Extending workflow into client functions
(upstream and downstream of the provider-run process) can also offer benefits of
transparency. However, it is easy to overcomplicate user requirements.
If process transformation and harmonization is to be conducted, it will have major impacts on
the enabling technology. It is all too easy for the transition to get dragged into complex
issues with ERP changes and release schedules, resulting in delays to process
transformation. It is important to not allow a business change program to become an IT
project.
Business Continuity:
It is easy to assume that a global or multinational company will have full business continuity
plans in place and that these are regularly tested. However, this often is not the case,
especially for business support functions such as finance or HR.
Although the contract with the service provider will likely include provisions for business
continuity plans, this is usually thought of as an IT issue, rather than a business
responsibility. This is generally due to confusion between IT disaster recovery and business
continuity.
Culture:
Last, but certainly not least, the diversity of culture that typically exists within any
multinational organization can delay transition unnecessarily. A transition project places great
demands on individuals across geographic regions, which may result in varied responses;
that often leads to confusion and exasperation within leadership teams. It is important,
therefore, to understand cultural differences and, if necessary, treat regions differently to
avoid problems.

Transition Project Management

We provide the following services to ensure that the transition is smooth and is made within
the estimated budget:
Transition Project Office:
Set up the project management control structure and relevant processes.
Human Resources:
Manage the transfer of people, their pay & conditions to us. Define the resource plan
necessary to deliver the services.
Workplace Services:
Establish a working environment for the transitioned (in-scope) people or for the Transition
and Delivery teams, such that they can perform their roles.
People Cultural Change:
Provide an environment where your employees feel welcome, valued and productive as they
transition to us. Ensure that our staff newly assigned to the project have an opportunity to
understand your organizations culture.
Supplier Management:
Negotiate, obtain vendor consent and transfer the in-scope 3rd party contracts and
resources to us. Establish ongoing procurement processes for the account team.
Security Assessment:
12

Understand your existing security policy and current practices, including IT Security scope,
processes, security settings, and requirements related to the contracted services. The
finding of this review effort will be formally documented as the baseline and analyzed by us
for potential issues. Any changes will be discussed and agreed with you.
Support Model:
We provide all types of support activities for the organization at various levels. The levels
can be divided in 4 types and are defined below.

L1
Initial level of
maintenance
provided by
user help
desk. This
helps to
screen the
issues &
assign to
appropriate
party/owner.
L3
It deals with
tickets
requiring
code changes

L2
Deals with
support
tickets that
can be dealt
by doing
basic
configuration
in the
application or
L4
suggesting
workarounds.
It deals with
tickets
related to the
product.
Might require
help from the
product
vendor in
terms of
raising
support
tickets.

Based on your requirements, we offer you the following types of support location facilities:

13

Implementation:
Application Incident & Problem Management:
To maintain the best possible service quality, we are going to ensure ISO 20000 and ITIL
2011 best practices.
In a way to integrate all the applications of SIA, a single support application will be built
where all the incidents and problems will be addressed. ServiceNow is the best available
ticketing tool which will be a single platform to receive the tickets raised by multiple users of
the applications. ServiceNow ITSM solutions give end to end visibility into ITIL infrastructure
and processes through a single system record. [1]
Apart from Problem and Incident management, ServiceNow will be used for the following
additional requirements too:
a. Change and Release Management
b. Asset Management
c. Service Catalog
d. Knowledge Management
Through ServiceNow both the internal and external users can log a service/incident ticket
pertaining to a specific application. For example, an incident with ticket re-fund will be
redirected to the Financial Service Department in the organization. Likewise, incidents
related to each application will reach the respective service desks for the further Diagnosis.
14

Depending on the SLA, the ticket should be prioritized within the stipulated time without
breaching the agreement. Various Support Teams, Technical Support Assistance, will be
assigned to each of the Application depending on the teams expertise and technical
knowledge.
The incidents will be prioritized in the following way depending on the business impact:
1. Low Impact
2. High
3. Very High
Apart from this, user urgency will also be categorized as follows:
1. Low
2. Medium
3. High
Through this categorization, tickets of one application will be pipelined according to the
business impact and user urgency. If there involve interlinking between the number of
applications, incidents of such nature will be given top priority depending on the business
logic that will be defined in the processes.
The prioritization of incidents through SLA will be as follows:
Business Impact
Low
Low
Low
High
High
Very High

User Urgency
Low
Medium
High
Medium
High
High

Service Desk
90-180 minutes
60-90 minutes
30-60 minutes
-

L2
1-2 hrs
1-2 hrs
1-2 hrs
-

L3
2-3 hrs
1-2 hrs
1-2 hrs

Approach to resolve incidents will be saved in the form of articles in Knowledge

Management of ServiceNow. Support Desk and L1 can always make use of Knowledge
Management Section for quick and efficient fixes for the incidents.
Frequently appeared similar incidents will be linked to one Problem Ticket. This Problem
Ticket will be a one-point reference to the development/ testing team which should act on it.
The problem ticket is also bound to the SLA. Multiple users getting impacted by the same
problem will be resolved through a permanent fix.
Since SeriveNow works on a centralized repository, all the applications of SIA in Singapore
and overseas will be taken care of.

Incident Management Process Flow:

The Incident Management Process Flow will be as follows:
Incident Identification Incident Logging Incident categorization Incident Prioritization
Initial Diagnosis Escalation (L2/L3) Incident Resolution Incident Closure
Communication with the users. [2]

15

It is not a requisite that any incident shall be passed off to each Service Level, but they can
be escalated to either L2 or L3 depending on the nature and complexity of the incident.

Preventive Maintenance:
Business Value Addition (BVA) initiative will be taken up to identify the prospective
incidents pertaining to each of the applications. The knowledge that is built over the
monitoring of applications will be converted into a Maintenance Activity so as to prevent
further incidents on a reported problem. This preventive maintenance (BVA activity) will be
taken up in a timely manner by inciting Change Requests to the respective Development
teams.
The experience curve effect shall be transferred to the processes to gain Economies of
Scope on each of the Application. For example, frequent similar incidents will be identified
and converted into a knowledge article. Doing such, resources will gain the experience curve
effect and hence gain efficiency. Through this approach, the resolution time can be reduced
to 50% for every two similar incidents. This ensures that the resource capability doubles up.
Apart from this, there will be high possibility of reducing the incidents every month through
the support of Problem Management, Knowledge Management and Change Management.

Customer Management:
In extension to the Incident Management Process Flow, the closure of the incident ensures
that a feedback form will be sent to the customers. The response from the customers will be
sent to the respective teams. The feedback is assessed in terms of response rate,
knowledge about the incident, and ability to handle, etc.
In the case of Problem Management, incidents of the users pertaining to a particular ticket
shall be informed through a prompt communication to keep them updated.
Maintenance activities will be scheduled well in advance to install the software updates and
apply patches. Since the processes of SIA operate on thin timelines, the planned activities
will be informed to customers at least 1 week in advance. Taking the Global Time zones into
consideration, planned activities like applying patches will be done during the non-activity of
the SIAs core IT functions. For e.g., 02.30 hrs 03.00 hrs for Asia-Pacific Zone.
Help Desk which ensures prompt responses will be set-up to address the customer queries
during the Peak Activity Hours. For e.g., to meet the demand during Singapore Day Time
(9.00 AM 4.00 PM), additional help desk support will be added to the applications from the
resources based out of other time zone (e.g., India).

Component Management:
To effectively plan for deployment and upgrading the base components of an application,
monitoring the components is important. For this, IBMs Tivoli Management Services will be
made to use to monitor various operating systems, databases and subsystems and send the
information to an Enterprise Monitoring Server. Since it follows a Server-Client-Agent Model,
all the applications which are integrated follow the Enterprise-wide compliance to SIA
Enterprise Architecture Framework. [3]

16

References:
1. http://www.servicenow.com/products/it-service-management.html
2. http://www.bmcsoftware.in/guides/itil-incident-management.html
3.https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SS3JRN_7.2.1/com.ibm.itm.doc_6.3/install/
overview_components.htm

17