Getronics Editorial Team
In this article:
Gatwick Airports needed a partner that would be adaptable and flexible, as well as a team that would efficiently work to tight timescales in a short period to ensure a successful transition and improved service. Getronics demonstrate to Gatwick their ability to provide a higher quality service desk, a flexible approach to delivering service excellence and introduce best-in-class user interaction which translates to improved customer satisfaction.
About Gatwick
Gatwick Airport is the UK’s second-largest airport and is owned by a group of international investment funds, of which Global Infrastructure Partners is the majority shareholder.
Today, Gatwick employs around 2,500 people and supports over 23,000 individuals through the different airlines, handlers, and retail partners. The airport has over 34.2 million passengers traveling through its two terminals annually, traveling to around 200 destinations in 90 countries, and is the world’s busiest single-use runway with up to 53 aircraft movements per hour during peak season.
Driving Growth Through Experience
As part of Gatwick’s wider strategic objectives to help their airlines grow and to provide an exceptional passenger experience, they required an agile service provider that could help them on their transformation journey whilst managing cost and delivering innovation using current and future technology platforms, including Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and other cloud-based offerings.
They needed a partner that would be adaptable and flexible, as well as a team that would efficiently work to tight timescales in a short period to ensure a successful transition and improved service. Crucially, they needed a supplier that would work cooperatively and effectively with the airport’s other suppliers.
Previously, this had always been a challenge, with suppliers competing with each other and not necessarily acting with the airport’s best interests at heart.
Midway through the tender process, a new CIO, Michael Ibbitson, joined the team to lead the transformation journey, bringing with him his own distinct views on how he wanted the airport to provide a truly great customer experience. Therefore they had to adapt their approach and strategy, and Getronics had to adjust in accordance with this.
Specifically, Gatwick’s IT Service Desk was a pain point and so Gatwick’s focus was firmly on increasing end-user satisfaction. Also, their applications needed to reduce in complexity and Gatwick recognized opportunities to create applications that delivered innovative ways for passengers to interact with the airport, thereby improving their customer experience.
Record-Time Transformation
Getronics won the contract in a competitive pitch against 25 other providers to deliver the airport’s Service Desk, Service Management, and Applications Management.
As part of its wider IT transformation strategy, the airport needed Getronics to overhaul its Service Desk, make significant improvements in the way the service was delivered, fix issues, namely customer service, operational processes and service levels, and generally transform the Desk to a state where it was fit for Gatwick to bring the service back in-house with Getronics’ support. All of this had to be achieved in just four months.
Getronics transitioned 93 critical airport operational applications from India using onshore and near-shore support and resourcing. A full knowledge transfer took place within just two months, half the usual transition time, making way for a more stable environment, achieved by a team of people focused on delivering improvements as well as innovation.
“We selected Getronics partly down to their “personality” as a company. We were impressed by the quality of their people (We met our delivery team before we awarded the contract) and to this day we maintain strong relationships right up to executive level.”
Anthony Lamoureux, Head of IT Service Delivery at Gatwick Airport
One Team, One Goal: User Satisfaction
Getronics set out to demonstrate to Gatwick their ability to provide a higher quality of service, a flexible approach to delivering service excellence, and introduce best in class user interaction which translates to improved customer satisfaction.
Within the first week of the Service Desk going live, the Gatwick IT Team started receiving positive feedback from the end-user community. This feedback was reflected in the Net Promoter Score (NPS) the Desk is measured by, which became a positive score for the first time in Gatwick Airport’s Service Desk history, increasing from the previous incumbent’s score of -37 to a record +4. Through the application transition work, a number of issues were uncovered that the airport wasn’t aware of, including out-of-date documentation, all of which were quickly resolved.
One of the key accomplishments was Getronics’ approach to working with Gatwick’s other suppliers through a ‘One Team’ methodology. Effectively working together with other suppliers is a prerequisite for delivering best-in-class service to the airport and to achieve this we developed a collaboration platform that brings all the airport’s service providers together.
All contracted SLAs were met or surpassed and Getronics was awarded Gatwick’s ‘ IT Team of The Year’, as voted for by Gatwick’s own IT staff.
The Future
With a lot of the discovery phase complete and foundations built, the focus is now firmly on driving IT innovation and improving the services delivered to both end-users and airport passengers. Getronics will focus on the application landscape in particular, helping the airport understand the true cost of those applications, before starting on an application transformation and rationalisation roadmap.
This is one of the key principles that Gatwick will be focused on over the next 4 years, with the introduction of new services such as SaaS and IaaS.
Longer term, the objective is to reduce the overall cost of IT and introduce more and more flexibility, all the while with a firm focus on driving innovation into the way they deliver services across Gatwick Airport.
Why Getronics?
The Getronics proposal and approach to delivering services were considered to be more dynamic due to several factors that distinguished us from the competition, for example, the experience of ITIL business processes and flexible approach to commercialising the service lots, as well as our considerable application development and management capabilities.
Aside from low risk and cost effectiveness, Getronics’ ability to be adaptive to Gatwick’s evolving strategy and work well with other suppliers were critical factors that enabled the successful transition and improvement of IT services. In addition, as with any partnership, it comes down to effective working relationships.
Gatwick met the Getronics delivery team before the contract was awarded and built relationships right up to Executive level, which was a differentiator.
“Getronics demonstrated all the values we were looking for in a services provider – a superior level of leadership and ability, as well as an energetic and agile team that felt like an extension of our business, rather than a third-party supplier. Crucially, the team worked seamlessly with other providers to deliver a service that was best for gatwick as a whole. Getronics had to quickly provide it services, undertaking the complex transition from the incumbent supplier, Logica, and fixing previous issues. The strength of this relationship enabled us to take a leap of faith with the project, ensuring strong foundations for future activity”.
Anthony Lamoureux, Head of IT Service Delivery at Gatwick Airport
