AirAsia Expedia, a joint venture between low-cost airline, AirAsia, and online travel agency, Expedia, has dramatically improved its budget forecasting and planning capabilities with Anaplan, a cloud-based in-memory and planning platform.
“The travel industry is highly dynamic, so we wanted something flexible, fast and user-friendly to collate our information in real time for business analysis,” said Henry Tjan, Head of Forecasting, Planning and Analysis, AirAsia Expedia. “Anaplan gave us the solution we were looking for, and we were impressed to find that implementation took only six weeks, compared with many months of previous attempts with other technologies.”
A major challenge erupted during the start-up period when the integration of data from the systems of AirAsia and Expedia resulted in incompatible solutions. The previous system extracted data from AirAsia’s proprietary system and Expedia’s in-house system and then combined them in Excel. After which, forecasting and planning were done in Excel and re-imported into the respective systems.
Samir Neji, Managing Director of Anaplan Asia, claimed that Anaplan resolved the issue with the use of a data loader that utilizes a sophisticated interface to read data from many popular ERP and CRM solutions on the market.
“When AirAsia Expedia migrated to Anaplan, we worked with them to ensure the Anaplan API drew information from their legacy systems quickly and accurately,” he said.
Anaplan offers a fully-featured forecasting and planning solution without the drawbacks of on-site solutions. No maintenance is required on the backend.
“In the implementation stage, there are different systems being used by Expedia and AirAsia,” Neji relates. “Anaplan is used to combine the operational and financial data from the underlying systems and analyze within different modules and dashboards in Anaplan.”
According to Neji, Anaplan Connect allows planners to run operations such as import of data and lists, export and other actions from the client. “It allows users to automate the whole process of running imports through a batch file. When combined with a scheduling tool, it allows the whole process to be run automatically, without the user having to log into the platform.”
Neji further explained that Anaplan also hosts Live Chat, email and hotlines to provide technical support. “As long as the establishment has an Internet connection, it can utilize Anaplan.”
With the integration, Anaplan now connects the two brands, 22 points of sales, and 14 channels for AirAsia Expedia across Asia. This was a task that previously involved using linked spreadsheets to collate data generated from disparate systems, and had to be manually updated to account for new points of sale.
The transformation may be done by the employees of the two companies even if they do not have the necessary technical skills. “Anaplan has an Excel feel, and it presents its logic in English sentences. After an online introductory training session with our Head of Customer Adoption, AirAsia Expedia’s Finance team could dive in and start building their models in Anaplan,” Neji claimed. He added that the solution is highly streamlined so that no scripting or coding knowledge is required to change formulas in a model.
“With the old system, we had various spreadsheets that were up to 60 megabytes in size. It was almost impossible to navigate. We had 300 to 400 formulas in the spreadsheets, and each time we had a new point of sale, we had to change the formulas and relink related files,” Tjan commented. “We implement Anaplan with zero scripting or coding. It was completely streamlined, and finance can make changes at any point in time.”
“By working with AirAsia Expedia, we were able to greatly improve the speed, accuracy and auditability of their forecasting,” said Neji. “Every number can be traced back to its source, and calculations are achieved in split seconds. This increases AirAsia Expedia’s ability to perform timely, accurate budgeting and planning.”
The Anaplan solution combines all the essential components for every department in any organization to build and maintain robust models, plans and forecasts using data sets that are always up-to-date.
“To get users started quickly, Neji relayed that Anaplan platform supports a growing collection of plug-and-play apps for common use cases – from finance to sales, marketing to HR and more. Apps can be used as they are, or can be modified to suit individual needs. Alternatively, users can start from scratch to create business models on their own.”
