Reaching new heights: how Smarthis saved $520,000 for Silver Airways

During the pandemic, the aviation sector faced unprecedented challenges, with a sharp drop in travel demand and severe operational restrictions. In this unique context, Silver Airways sought innovative strategies to drive its growth.

The Challenge of Silver Airways

Silver Airways is a U.S.-based airline operating flights to various destinations, primarily in Florida, the Bahamas, and other locations in the southeastern United States. In addition to its regional flights, the company has stood out in recent years by entering the cargo transport market, offering services for e-commerce companies, including giants like Amazon.

Faced with the challenge of expanding its operations in this complex scenario, the leadership of Silver Airways sought innovative solutions to boost its business. Upon receiving a recommendation about automation services provided by Smarthis, they decided to seize the opportunity, embarking on a Proof of Value (PoV) initiative with our RPA solutions.

The results not only exceeded the expectations of the partnership but also demonstrated that when a company's leadership collaborates with Smarthis' expertise, it is possible to incorporate a new digital transformation mindset into its organizational culture.

A Backlog Resolved in Hours

As part of this Proof of Value initiative, the process selected for automation was the cataloging of the airline's "no-show" list. In aviation, this term refers to passengers who booked reservations but did not show up for boarding.

Previously, Silver Airways faced the daily challenge of handling approximately 100 records of no-show passengers. Manually, each record took about two and a half minutes to be entered into the system, resulting in a backlog of 7,000 pending records.

With the implementation of our RPA solution, our team developed an automation that significantly reduced the time required for each record, taking just one and a half seconds. By deploying the software, Silver Airways not only managed to keep all new records up to date but also completely eliminated the backlog of pending records in just four hours.

A New Mindset

At the beginning of the partnership between Silver Airways and Smarthis, employees naturally showed some skepticism and apprehension about the possibility of automating their functions. Amid the ongoing technological revolution, this is a common concern.

However, as we shared the results of the pilot projects and held several discussions with the company's team, everyone gradually began to understand that automation solutions do not replace employees but rather serve as support tools for the entire team.

Freed from operational tasks, the team could focus on strategic activities that drive the company's expansion while avoiding the stress caused by task overload.

Over time, the initial mindset of "why automate" was replaced with the mentality of "what else can we automate" across all areas of the company. Daily, our team began receiving numerous ideas for processes that could easily be resolved through automation.

Results and Future Expectations

After completing the proof-of-concept projects, Smarthis delivered dozens of new automations to Silver Airways, further expanding the possibilities for optimization.

The results achieved through our partnership were remarkable: the Silver Airways team now operates with 45 active automated processes, resulting in savings of an impressive 13,000 work hours annually. This translates into an estimated cost savings of approximately $520,000 in operational expenses.

• +45 processes actively automated
• 13,000 hours saved annually
• $520,000 saved

In addition to continuously improving existing automations, Silver Airways has also begun exploring data analysis services provided by Smarthis. This new approach allows the company to gain clearer, more comprehensive insights into its data, enabling more assertive and agile decision-making, further driving its success.

Analytics at Silver Airways

Silver Airways has adopted a significant data analysis initiative encompassing various levels, from the executive leadership to daily operational decision-making. This relationship continues to evolve and develop.

Initially, Smarthis' primary role in this initiative was to develop dashboards for visualizing essential business indicators. Although the ETL process steps were relatively straightforward, these dashboards added value by effectively meeting their intended purposes. Over time, the analyses became more sophisticated, requiring advanced data extraction and processing techniques from various sources, such as Smarthis' own automations, APIs, SharePoint, Oracle Databases, and Cloud Databases (Google Cloud Platform).

As the scope of available data expanded and the internal recognition of Smarthis' work grew, other departments began requesting dashboards and reports for their teams. Among the various benefits, three stand out:

• The expansion of Data Analytics work to end-to-end projects, moving beyond the idea that the field is synonymous with dashboards to include data processing and analysis programs, information availability, and indicator governance;
• The high level of refinement in the analyses delivered, such as real-time details of open IT tickets, financial results monitoring shared with stakeholders, application of statistical knowledge in machine learning integrated with Power BI, and more;
• The blue ocean of personal and professional development opportunities for those participating in the project.

Just as we mapped the needs and specificities of Silver Airways, we are ready to do the same for your company. Increasing productivity and reducing costs through process automation and digital transformation is our specialty. No matter what industry your company operates in, we are ready to collaborate and deliver incredible results.