Heathrow continues IT services collaboration with Capgemini
London’s Heathrow Airport has extended its alliance with global IT consultancy Capgemini. The international travel hub has agreed a five-year contract with the firm, which will help it deploy digital services to adapt to changing consumer demands.
Capgemini has been working with Heathrow for more than a decade. Last year, the international airport agreed a contract extension with Capgemini in the UK for the applications and infrastructure support of Heathrow’s IT estate. The award saw Capgemini’s global teams continuing to support Heathrow’s digital transformation agenda by delivering further automation and efficiencies from complex airport operational systems to next-gen cloud technologies.
One year on, Capgemini has announced the winning of another new contract with Heathrow – this time to provide end user services and service desk support until the close of 2026. The five-year deal will see Capgemini support Heathrow’s continued objective to deliver enhanced passenger experience, while the contract also includes a three-year extension to Capgemini’s existing applications and infrastructure support for Heathrow’s previously mentioned technology estate.
Steve Baldwin, Account Director at Capgemini remarked, “We are delighted to continue supporting Heathrow on their journey to enhance the overall experience for travellers and staff, based on needs that will evolve as the travel industry recovers from the pandemic. Our longstanding partnership with Heathrow, and in-depth understanding of its requirements meant we were able to deliver solutions to efficiently scale their operations at speed. Our ‘one team’ approach and a long-term partnership, built on trust and teamwork, played a key role in ensuring success.”
According to the latest study of the aviation sector by strategy consulting giant Bain & Company, the revenues of the global airline industry will reach $235 billion by the end of 2021. Having been decimated by the Covid-19 lockdown, this shows the industry still has a long way to go to bounce back. Its income remains a whopping 65% lower than its pre-pandemic total revenue from 2019, of $666 billion.
The expectations and needs of the customers and passengers across the travel and transport sector are fast changing. After a year of volatility, answering these changing needs is crucial to the aviation sector’s recovery. In anticipation of this, Heathrow requires agile and economical solutions that can be delivered quickly and efficiently to ensure business continuity.
Building on the breadth of work already undertaken as part of the existing partnership, Capgemini was able to deliver services that can be scaled as per the business requirement, offering flexibility and speed. This work compliments the continuous efforts of the solutions team at Heathrow, which focuses on meeting the airport’s ever-evolving needs via digital transformation, further automation and efficiencies, from complex airport operational systems to next-gen cloud technologies.
Speaking on the continued partnership, Leanne Lynch, Director of Technology and Cyber Defence at Heathrow Airport said, “In order to match the pace of the industry’s recovery and also support our ambition of growth, we need to continuously evolve our business to offer the best experience efficiently. We recognize that technology plays a vital role in ensuring the successful delivery of this strategy, which requires us to meet the evolving business and customer expectations. I am pleased to continue to work with Capgemini. The team provides the right level of support to meet our current needs and this gives us the flexibility to respond to the changing ways of working over the next few years.”
