Vueling is a Spanish low-cost airline based at Viladecans in Greater Barcelona. It is the largest airline in Spain by fleet size and number of destinations. As of 2021, Vueling served 122 destinations in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, and carried more than 34 million passengers in 2019. Since 2013, it has been an operating company of International Airlines Group, the parent company of British Airways and Iberia.
Business Need
Vueling had just emerged from COVID-19, one of the company’s most critical moments related to the dramatic reduction in tourism; for a while, the airlines ceased all operations, and planes were grounded.
When Vueling resumed operations and began serving customers, the company found that it could not adequately handle many customer requests, because data was poorly integrated, and lines of business could not quickly access and use customer data to meet their needs. All data requests needed to go through the Data department, which became a bottleneck.
Vueling’s IT department launched an initiative to improve data democratization throughout the company, to address the following concerns: How can IT not become a bottleneck to the entire organization? How can IT help to share the contributions and the value added to the organization in terms of data analytics and data products?
Vueling’s existing data infrastructure was rigid, and it did not enable the company to implement modern advances such as data mesh, or even effective data governance and data security. This made it challenging for Vueling to enable true democratization.
Solution
Vueling realized that a data fabric solution would streamline access to multiple data sources, improving data democratization. After engaging in a few proofs-of-concept, to assess the performance and the integration of a variety of solutions within Vueling’s heterogeneous ecosystem, Vueling selected the Denodo Platform, a logical data management platform, as it was superior to competing solutions. Vueling implemented the Denodo Platform as a unified data-access layer above the company’ disparate data sources. As a logical data management platform, it enables real-time access to data, across the company’s disparate data sources, without having to copy or move the data from its original locations. Vueling began implementing the Denodo Platform across all business units.
Benefits
Supported by the Denodo Platform, business units can now directly engage in data analytics, effectively democratizing data access. This new capability enabled Vueling to provide quick answers to meet customer needs. Vueling now operates in a faster, better, more organized way, and customers are provided with answers every time they contact call centers – answers that are “fine-tuned” to each customer’s unique situation.
The Denodo Platform also improved data governance, security, and regulatory compliance. By enabling a unified data-access layer across disparate data sources, the Denodo Platform streamlines compliance with myriad regulations, such as Europe’s Global Data Protection Regulation GDPR). The Denodo Platform enables Vueling to maintain strict access control over its systems, for example enabling selective masking across the entire data infrastructure from a single point of control.