In an interview with Biztech2.0 Virender Pal, CTO, SpiceJet, discusses the importance of IT in the Indian airlines industry, with specific focus on IT’s role at SpiceJet.

How important a role does IT play in the airlines industry? What are the typical requirements of IT at SpiceJet?

Like other industries, the airlines industry, which I believe is the most competitive, depends a lot on IT. With the help of IT, we at SpiceJet are coming up with new services for the ease of our customers. More than 90% of our revenue is generated from online bookings and through credit card transactions. The increasing penetration of broadband in India is helping us expand our reach among passengers wanting to travel by air. This has enabled us to not only cut down on costs but also introduce new services like online insurance, roving check in, IVR based services and many more. IT is helping us to serve our customers, as well as address fraud challenges.

Could you please throw some light on SpiceJet’s tie-up with CyberSource?

With the increasing usage of credit cards in the online booking process it is difficult to avoid online frauds. We wanted a security vendor who could process online transactions on our behalf, while at the same time provide a hassle free transaction environment to our customers. It is difficult for us to keep track of each and every transaction made through cards.

We had evaluated various security solutions but decided to go with CyberSource as they have considerable experience in the global market. CyberSource Decision Manager is highly customisable and can easily be updated to suit our business needs. The solution fits well into the company's overall e-business strategy, as it enables us to control fraud without additional resources required to manually screen transactions.

What are the recent IT initiatives at SpiceJet?

We have deployed various airlines specific applications for managing fleets, rosters of our crewmembers, engineering applications for flight maintenance, inventory management and other in house applications both at the front end and back end. These specialised applications are deployed with the help of vendors like ARM.

There are some applications developed by our in-house team like website design and development, automation of customer care department and other IVR based applications. We have a small team of 10 people at our IT department, which has also developed the roving check-in facility application. The roving check in facility is introduced in various airports as per the requirements of that airport and as per our passenger load. We are still to deploy the service in the Hyderabad airport.

We have implemented this service in Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai and Chennai. The web based check-in facility was also developed our internal team members. We have recently tied up with BillDesk to provide an integrated net banking facility to our customers. This facility will provide SpiceJet customers an additional option to purchase and pay for their tickets, through their internet banking accounts on the SpiceJet's website. These initiatives will help our customers, as well as us to overcome fraud related issues. We have also tied up with TATA AIG to provide insurance to our customers, which includes life insurance, baggage insurance and insurance for flight delays. We have integrated our reservation system with the TATA AIG system and are getting a good response from our passengers.

What are the challenges that SpiceJet is facing in getting approvals for IT investments?

There is a lot of flexibility to introduce new services. The management team is supporting us in every aspect. It is a continuous effort by us to reduce IT cost by providing full support to the management and to make the IT department a revenue generator. We want it to be a profit centre and not just an investment centre.

My previous experience in the field of application development is helping me in introducing innovative services, enabled by IT.