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Travelport GDS

ABA10 WinnerCompany: Travelport GDS, Atlanta, GA
Company Description: Travelport GDS is one of the world’s largest global distribution system (GDS) providers operating both the Galileo and the Worldspan brands, providing real-time travel information and booking capabilities to online and offline travel agencies in over 145 countries. Travelport GDS is a division of Travelport, one of the world’s largest service providers to the travel industry.
Nomination Category: Products & Product Management Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Product Development/Management Team of the Year

Nomination Title: Travelport's IT Development Integration Team

1. Tell the story about what this nominated team achieved since January 1 2009 (up to 500 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:

The merger of Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines presented a tremendous
challenge and opportunity to Travelport, a long-time systems and IT solution
provider to both airlines. The process of operationally bringing two airlines
together is delicate at best, but combining the airlines’ business processes
and vastly different base systems added a much higher level of complexity.
For Delta, the world’s largest airline, it was critically important to
maintain both systems’ integrity so global operations would not be impacted
during the process. For Travelport, the mission was clear and formidable:
integrate the two major airlines’ reservation, departure control and flight
operations systems through a succinct time-line with minimal impact to airline
customers as possible.

Without delay, Travelport’s Airline IT Solutions group formed a dedicated
Integration Team to define the scope required for a project of this size and
outline required processes and procedures that included close coordination
with both Delta and Northwest. Headed by vice president Sherwood Carter, 424
high-level projects were identified, including their potential obstacles and
targeted goals. The team performed extensive research to evaluate Delta and
Northwest’s legacy operating systems and their IT functions. Obstacles
identified included data discrepancies between the two systems which required
strategic planning and development to incorporate new or eliminate redundant
IT functionality. Additionally, the team reviewed the successes and failures
of past migrations (both within and outside Travelport) to help direct their
strategy on lessons learned. Each key project was subsequently broken down
into manageable tasks, which was crucial to the success of the technology
integration and allowed Travelport’s business-as-usual activities to continue
unabated at the same time.

The team’s most critical milestone was the migration of Northwest’s inventory
databases to the Delta system which entailed over 1.6 million Passenger Name
Records (PNRs), 12 million tickets and 900,000 Electronic Miscellaneous
Documents (EMDs). They developed a unique and innovative two-step approach to
change every Northwest flight reservation to a Delta flight. Unlike other
industry migrations, this was completed without service interruption and
transparent to end-customers; proof point being neither competitive airlines
nor airline customers was aware the migration took place!

Other major milestones included the integration of customer loyalty and
benefit programs (frequent flyer), crew scheduling, and infrastructure changes
for ongoing projects such as fleet migration and aircraft maintenance systems.
Modifications to over 8,100 program segments on the Delta system with over
10,000 program segments overall were made.

Throughout the planning, development and testing process, the Integration Team
involved key players across Travelport divisions, conducted daily meetings to
coordinate tests and validate infrastructure/functionality changes, and held
multiple dress rehearsals to mimic the migration in a real world environment.
The team worked nights, weekends and holidays clocking over 345,000 hours of
effort.

The successful integration of Delta and Northwest’s systems reflected months
of innovative planning, strategic coordination, and hard work by the members
of the Integration Team. The team’s remarkable expertise, strong communication
practices, and key leadership aligned perfectly with their passion for
customer service and dedication to the company and the migration’s success.

2. List hyperlinks to any online news stories, press releases, or other documents that support the claims made in the section above. IMPORTANT: Begin each link with http://, and enclose each link in square brackets; for example, [http://www.youraddress.com]:

http://news.delta.com/index.php?s=43&item=911
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/02/08/delta-nwa-merger-nearly-done/
http://www.ajc.com/business/delta-retires-northwest-web-288241.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704789404574636351284060282.html

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/travel/2009-03-09-airline-merger-northwest-delta_N.htm

3. Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the leader(s) of the nominated team:

Sherwood Carter, Vice President – Development, Airline IT Solutions, is
responsible for all new software development and all maintenance and
production support efforts for Travelport’s reservation hosting system,
business intelligence products and subscriptions services, as well as Delta
Air Lines’ reservation hosting and operations system.

Prior to his current role, Sherwood held leadership positions at Worldspan and
was primarily responsible for Delta’s systems which Worldspan provides for
Delta’s use. Sherwood began his career with Delta Air Lines in 1977 in Cabin
Service and then moved to the technology arena in 1978 and then into various
management roles supporting Delta’s technology systems.