Malaysia Airports’ digital push to 2020

According to SAP Malaysia’s Managing Director, Terrence Yong, governments and businesses need to start their digital journey immediately, to remain relevant in the digital economy.

Part of their efforts to help businesses with this, Leonardo, SAP’s IoT or Internet of Things brand, relaunched as a digital brand and their digital innovation system, that can help businesses rapidly innovate.

SAP’s Head of Analytics and Insights Business in Southeast Asia, Kathleen Mueller, said SAP Leonardo is fully integrated with existing SAP technologies, to help customers understand the application of innovation into their respective businesses.

(L-R): Azli, Yong and Mueller

SAP Leonardo also comprises of services, one of which notably is about business case creation, to justify investment and time it will take to take resources to get from present point to where the business needs to be.

Mueller admitted that certain industries would have more demand for SAP Leonardo, and indeed in Malaysia, Malaysia Airports Holdings Berhad (MAHB) is one organisation that is looking to benefit from going digital.

MAHB’s vision

MAHB’s Chief Strategy Officer, Azli Mohamed shared that MAHB’s 5-year business plan, Runway to Success 2020, is into its second year, of implementation.

It comprises of four pillars, namely to maximise KLIA’s potential as a hub for the region, to create the total digital airport experience, to leverage KLIA Aeropolis, a sprawling 100 sq km development project, and to expand MAHB’s presence internationally beyond just Hyderabad and Istanbul.

As part of Runway to Success 2020, MAHB is into their second month of an 18-month big data and analytics (BDA) endeavour. Azli said, “The objective is to drive efficiency, process and revenue generation,” while adding that about half of MAHB’s revenue comes from aeronautical operations, and another half from non-aeronautical operations like retail.

Airport4.0 at work: An example of the dashboard of information that would be at the fingertips of airport operators, for them to take action upon. Imagine also a heatmap of airport visitors and passengers throughout the airport, so that personnel can be optimally placed at locations where they can be of most use.

He declined to name the other technology vendors, or whether there are other vendors involved in their BDA project, only revealing that they are in the midst of implementing SAP’s SuccessFactors, a human capital management solution.

Mueller pointed out, “In my opinion, people data is more important than business data (in this case).”

Azli stated that the ambition is to eventually run on a unified platform, which seems to suggest other vendors may be involved and/or other types of data would be utilised (and visualised as graph- and chart-based analytics) by this platform, in the future.