Business Intelligence

When hours of downtime cost millions of dollars, we needed to improve and diagnose when error tickets may lead to larger system failures. Understanding operator or system error is critical to quarterly results.

The Challenge.

United Airlines had data everywhere to a point that it was overwhelming their operations team. The company, drowning in data, was being impacted by two factors that needed a design solution for. They were either missing key indicators for customer or operational impacts until it had creating significant cascading effects, and secondly they were struggling to understand what the root cause of the issue was to quickly respond. United needed to align on a single platform design for all operational groups to consume and respond efficaciously.

A second (parallel) BI effort was also underway that had similar attributes in awareness on flight delays. Field teams would report IT issues that caused operational delays that IT services struggled to validate the source and visualize deltas to operational best practices for on-time departures.

The Point of View:

Delays are inevitable in logistics and process-driven operations such as an airline. The impacts can be felt from their dependencies, cascading across the globe. We wanted to understand how we can build better tools that evaluate where the root cause comes from to see where there is persistence that needs to be fixed.

A larger challenge comes from the bias in agent reporting as well. This bias comes from agents who are measured on the on-time bias, and not truthful considerations of training, human error, or poor communications.

The Impact:

These errors in reporting can cause substantial cost overruns in the millions from either overbuilding on the wrong problem or missing the real root cause completely.

United has a complex ecosystem of data sources that impacts operational efficiency. This complexity also creates its own challenges.

The Approach.

There were six operational verticals across a global footprint from flight teams, airport teams, station ops to network (global) operational teams, all with divisions that had This was a highly complex project that was attempted several times in the past by various teams. Those outcomes only went as far as quasi-modified analytical displays that never tied together various sources. During early analysis, I realized that ultimately the customer impact was what was missing in each display which contradicted the dedication to the customer experience the company had renewed under leadership.

Stakeholder meetings
Competitive Analysis
Current Data Heuristics (Spotfire, GA and other BI platforms)
Define and align common customer journey to baseline data requirements
Rapidly ideate in workshops in various teams
Prototype and validate with user sessions
Leadership presentation
Requirements and gap analysis

Where we started:
Root cause analysis

United Airlines Delay Analysis can be cryptic to the untrained eye. Even once trained, it can still leave much to understand as to what exactly caused the delay - the root cause. The analysis discusses a series of events that were generated that impacted the resulting delay.

Sample operational dashboards

The Team Epiphany

When evaluating the volume of metrics, it dawned on our operational team that the “customer” we monitored most was our airplanes, not our staff and customers.

This needed to change.

The “Cloud” Journey.

Although various business verticals required specific requirements, alignment to common data narratives and taxonomy structures needed to be achieved in order to solve for complex challenges across these teams. Below is the customer journey map that was evangelized across the organization. This journey allowed us to flip the focus from an operation that is focused on airplanes and instead a journey that impacts customers.

It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more.
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more.
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more.