Air India techs up, migrates outdated ERP system to RISE With SAP

Air India, the airline that recently changed hands, successfully completed its ERP modernization program ahead of schedule, by migrating from an on-premise legacy mainframe system to SAP Cloud, laying a strong foundation for its digital transformation journey.

This is expected to bring significant improvements in Air India’s core enterprise functions such as finance and Human Resources while fast-tracking its ability to roll out advanced capabilities in its commercial, operations and engineering areas.

Air India’s vision is to emerge as the world’s most technologically advanced airline. A critical and foundational capability for this is a highly reliable, scalable modern ERP system that will drive significant improvements to our operational efficiency and assist us in creating a delightful customer experience

Air India’s Chief Digital and Technology Officer, Dr. Satya Ramaswamy

The Star Alliance member announced the successful migration of its core Enterprise Resource Planning system using RISE with SAP, a tailor-made ERP software, bundled with transformation services, business analytics, and partner expertise that helps companies complete their personalised path to the cloud. This migration was a critical component in the larger digital transformation of Air India, with an impact on the modernization across business operations.

“Air India’s vision is to emerge as the world’s most technologically advanced airline. A critical and foundational capability for this is a highly reliable, scalable modern ERP system that will drive significant improvements to our operational efficiency and assist us in creating a delightful customer experience. We identified the migration of our ERP System to a modern cloud infrastructure as one of the most important steps in this transformation journey,” said Air India’s Chief Digital and Technology Officer, Dr. Satya Ramaswamy. “We are glad to have completed this migration successfully, using a high level of creativity in overcoming the challenges that came our way. We are very grateful to the fantastic team from SAP that worked with us hand-in-hand to execute this transition flawlessly, and ahead of schedule.”

“Air India is one of the most iconic brands in the country, and we’re thrilled to deepen our long-standing partnership, as they enter a new chapter in their journey to become a world-class airline serving global customers, with a proud Indian heart,” said Kulmeet Bawa, President & Managing Director, SAP Indian Subcontinent. “With SAP’s cutting-edge cloud technology, Air India will enhance its customer experience, become an intelligent, sustainable enterprise, and accelerate people transformation as key elements of its growth,” he added.

One of the biggest challenges Air India faced in its comprehensive modernization journey was its outdated ERP system running on a decade-old mainframe and associated software. The migration and cutover of such critical systems is normally performed with backup and restore operations on an equivalent system. The unavailability of such a system anywhere in the world was a seemingly insurmountable hurdle. Team Air India worked in close collaboration with SAP to devise innovative solutions and techniques to overcome the challenge and eventually delivering a successful migration ahead of schedule. This migration paves the way for further modernization of Air India’s ERP system and the combination of other Group airlines into one entity.