America West maintains operational performance with CA`s CleverPath Portal

Computer Associates International, Inc (CA) today announced that America West Airlines (AWA) is using CleverPath Portal to build COMPASS, its strategic business-to-employee (B2E) information portal. As a result of implementing CleverPath Portal, the airline has already begun to receive return on their investment early in the deployment. America West anticipates that additional efficiencies, productivity gains and significant savings will be realised as the portal is rolled out to all employees nationwide over the next two years.

From its hubs in Phoenix, Las Vegas and Columbus, Ohio, America West operates 600 daily departures across 88 destinations in Mexico, Canada and the US. Rapid growth in the airline`s early years created diverse information support systems distributed across multiple mainframe, Unix and Windows servers. America West needed the information from these disparate systems to be consolidated and communicated to employees more efficiently and cost-effectively.

The airline business historically is one of intense competition to provide customers with the best service at the lowest price. America West knows the key to containing cost is to manage the operations of the airline with precision. In part, that means building "situational awareness" into the operations management processes. Situational awareness is enabled when diverse data streams are brought together from legacy and leading-edge technologies into a coherent information framework.

The solution is COMPASS, a B2E portal designed by America West to connect and empower its 13 000 employees. Just as mariners and pilots use a compass for navigation, America West`s employees will use COMPASS to navigate through the company`s information resources.

America West chose CA`s CleverPath Portal for COMPASS after reviewing offerings from more than 10 different companies.

"We selected CleverPath Portal because of product maturity, vision, market share, cost-effectiveness and adherence to open standards," said Dan Berkey, director of business technology delivery. "We also evaluated other intangibles such as vendor support. CA was clearly focused on meeting our business needs throughout the project, and continues to be a great partner for America West."

America West`s immediate challenge was to provide its System Operations Control Centre (SOCC) with a seamless platform for weather alerts, aircraft availability, aircraft maintenance status and operational performance metrics. AWA had planned to build a video wall for that capability in its new SOCC, but with CleverPath Portal, AWA and CA Professional Services employees integrated the necessary information on common desktops within a few days. Using open standards, the new portal made the need for proprietary hardware and large infrastructure costs unnecessary. Additionally, COMPASS delivery of operational data to field stations, will cut the length of daily conference calls by more than half, reducing costs even more.

"Our mission is to provide the best service possible to our customers, which fundamentally entails running a good airline," said John Wilson, vice president of operations control and planning. "Fundamental to achievement of this mission is delivery of reliable situational data to the employees managing the airlines operations. COMPASS has delivered on this requirement and done so within our airline`s tight fiscal controls."

"The savings generated from the SOCC installation provide an early return on investment, but we know that productivity gains from automating business processes will outstrip those savings as we extend the COMPASS implementation into our field stations and the rest of the corporation," said Berkey.

COMPASS will leverage the Internet to make decision-support information and functionality available to employees on and off the job. AWA will take advantage of online-collaboration and real-time information exchange of data such as aircraft status, parts availability, weather status and other operational and business information. COMPASS` continuing roll-out also calls for integrating other business-critical applications, such as Finance, Revenue Management, Airport Operations, Flight Tracking and others.

"Our job is all about getting the necessary information to the right people at the right time," said Berkey. "We are basing COMPASS on the CleverPath Portal because it allows us to deliver timely information and enables our employees to personalise the information content they need."