American Airlines Upgrades AA.comwith ATG to Improve CustomerRelationshipsATG Relationship Management Platform Key to Improving the Overall Customer Experience of B2C Web Site

Summary

· ATG Relationship Management Platform has allowed AA.com to roll out new self-service initiatives quickly, such as online flight check-in on AA.com - designed to improve the travel experience for the customer and lower operational costs.

· AA.com has been able to extend profiling, reporting, and personalized content deliverycapabilities for its customers.

· Site performance has increased approximately 300 percent to an average of 1.7-second home page response times from broadband connections.

· AA.com can handle up to one million unique visitors on any given day - generating as many as 1.9 million business transactions.

· Since launching the new Web site, AA.com traffic has increased by nearly 25 percent to an average of 750,000 daily visitors.

· The site has enhanced the customer experience through easier navigation, better speed,frequent updates, and increased stability.

· AA.com has accelerated time-to-market with new services via a flexible architecture andbiweekly Web updates.

ATG Case Study: American Airlines

Introduction

American Airlines sought to enhance theonline experience of its customers at aa.com

Since the mid-nineties, the AA.com Web site has

served as a critical distribution channel for American

Airlines. As the site increased in popularity manage-

ment foresaw the need to re-architect the site to

support more customers and enable the swifter

delivery of new services.

American Airlines is the world’s largest airline with

jet service to destinations throughout the World.

AA.com is the airline’s award-winning Web site and

is recognized as one of the most popular travel sites

on the Web. The site’s initial architecture could not

support the company’s needs to scale this Business-

to-Consumer (B2C) site flexibly and allow American

Airlines to continue enhancing the online experi-

ences of its customers.

The Challenge

swiftly re-architect the site to scale to supportmore customers and increased transactions

Technology leaders wanted to generate new and

increased usage of the Web site while also creating

a better understanding of how AA.com could improve

the overall travel experiences of its customers. A

flexible-yet-powerful underlying technical architec-

ture was needed to accommodate the features that

AA.com customers desired and set the stage for

further enhancements necessitated by a competi-

tive industry.

The original Web site was based on a C++ architec-

ture.This limited the ability to add new features and

services, and made it difficult to keep up with ever-

increasing demand. American Airlines wanted to

expand personalization features available on the Web

site to improve customer service and create new rev-

enue opportunities. Per Rob Friedman, Managing

Director of Personalized Marketing,“We believed that

offering a unique user experience would enhance

customer service while providing a more effective

marketing and sales channel”. A flexible architecture

was required to support cross-selling and up-selling

opportunities, and to better enable the implementa-

tion of personalized promotions.

“The integration of additional functionality was a

cumbersome, time-consuming process on the last

version of the site,” explained Daniel Henry, Director

of Application Development for Customer Technology.

“To integrate new functions we had to make signif-

icant changes to the architecture.We recognized that

the old site required longer development cycles

and, due to the nature of our rapidly changing

industry, this was not a position that we wanted to

find ourselves continuously encountering. We

wanted to ensure that we investigated a myriad of

technologies and carefully evaluated prospective

vendors. Getting the ‘right’ solution in place and

building strategic, long-term working relation-

ships with solution providers – both product and

services – were integral to our efforts.”

The Solution

atg relationship management and atg professional services

The need for a standards-based architecture led the

AA.com team to J2EE technology as the foundation

of its next-generation e-commerce site architecture.

With the decision to adopt J2EE technology as the

basis for its site came the need to replace the under-

lying software platform. Following an examination

of the most trafficked e-commerce destinations,

American Airlines chose ATG Relationship

Management Platform. Henry said,“ATG provides

us with a robust set of personalization capabilities

that truly gives us a competitive advantage. ATG also

demonstrated total commitment to making our

initiatives a success.”

American Airlines also required expertise to help

internal staff design and implement the new site.

ATG Professional Services provided architecture

design and configuration assistance, and Totality

Corporation provided managed services at an EDS

hosting facility.“Because ATG software is at the heart

of our application engine, we wanted to find a

managed services provider that had expertise

with high-volume ATG deployments,”explained

Susanna Brown, Manager of Operations and

Infrastructure for Customer Technology.“The contri-

bution of Totality to the management of the

hardware and software provides significant value

to AA.com.”

Orbitz provided the booking engine capabilities, thus

enhancing AA.com’s travel reservation offering.

Working with these and other technology vendors,

American Airlines successfully designed and

implemented a next-generation application and

platform infrastructure. It was deployed in an

aggressive timetable. Even with enhanced

functionality and flexibility, the site’s architecture is

designed to rapidly scale. The standards-based archi-

tecture provides a solid foundation on which AA.com

can continue to integrate additional enhancements.

Members of the ATG Professional Services Group

worked with AA.com staff on the architecture design

for the next-generation e-commerce site. Together,

they broke down the deployment into manageable

projects on a detailed schedule. A beta version of the

site was released with testing for Quality of Service

(QoS) requirements, security, scalability, availability,

and performance. ATG Professional Services worked

with the AA.com development team on implement-

ing the application and platform infrastructure

throughout the process, with full production

deployment less than a month later.

Building an Integrated Solution

One of the architectural challenges of the new version

of AA.com was the requirement to integrate with

the American Airlines Transaction Management Sys-

tem (AATMS) database, which hosts more than 46

million AAdvantage accounts. AATMS runs in an IBM

mainframe environment under IMS and DB2. BEA

WebLogic Server was employed by EDS to build a

gateway to IMS transactions, while AA.com accesses

DB2 transactions directly via Java Database Connec-

tivity (JDBC™) technology.

The architecture of ATG Relationship Management

Platform is flexible enough to handle the front-end

interfaces while routing transactions through back-

end systems such as AATMS and third-party systems

like Orbitz. This innovative architecture plays an

important role in helping AA.com sustain high traffic

and transaction rates.

ATG Relationship Management Platform is a J2EE-

compliant application framework that uses the latest

online customer relationship management

functionality and contains powerful scenario

personalization tools needed to manage complex

customer interactions over time. The ATG solution

extends profiling, reporting, and personalized con-

tent delivery capabilities and offers out-of-the-box

support for Web, e-mail, and wireless delivery, and it

can be customized for integrating other channels.

It also supports open standards such as XML and

Web services and provides linear scalability.

Consumer and business customers are able to book

travel reservations, manage accounts, and check news,

flight status, airport security updates, and more using

both wired and wireless devices. In addition, the “My

Account” feature allows customers to personalize

their home page and the information they see

throughout the site. The new AA.com relies on ATG

Relationship Management Platform in part because

of its strong personalization features.“Personalization

is at the heart of our business requirements and was

one of the key reasons we selected ATG,” Henry said.

“Personalization truly differentiates us from our

competition.”

“ATG delivers robust, high-performance e-commerce

capabilities that we truly see as a competitive advan-

tage,” said Jason Goth, Managing Architect for

Customer Technology. “With ATG, we’re able to

extend functionality that results in new revenue

opportunities without major redesigning and recoding.”

AA.com continues to provide passengers with access

to faster and more efficient check-in procedures,

flight information, fare sales, and travel planning

tools. AA.com managers continue to enhance the

site with a great deal of capabilities, including the

ability to check in for flights via AA.com, book award

travel, and support wireless access technologies.

Management is driving greater integration between

AA.com and channel reservation and airport systems,

and striving to seamlessly integrate AA.com with

traditional booking channels to simplify customer

interactions.

Measuring success

Since the re-launch, AA.com has been able to accel-

erate time-to-market through biweekly and rapid

AAdvantage reservation personalization.

April 2003. 4540002-01

© 2003 Art Technology Group, Inc. ATG, Art TechnologyGroup, the ATG logo and ClearCommerce are registeredtrademarks of Art Technology Group. Scenario Personalizationand Data Anywhere Architecture are service marks of ArtTechnology Group. All other trademarks are the property of their respective holders. NASDAQ: ARTG

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releases of new site features. The site continues to

meet its scalability objectives. It has experienced a

nearly 25 percent increase in traffic since the launch

of the new site to average 750,000 visitors daily.

AA.com now handles up to one million unique

visitors daily, and it generates as many as 1.9

million business transactions per day.

The new architecture can support future growth

requirements while maintaining a high-degree of

availability and reliability. AA.com is currently

sustaining over 99.99 percent availability,

excluding scheduled maintenance. Site perform-

ance has increased approximately 300 percent to an

average of 1.7-second home page response times

from broadband connections. AA.com has been

able to enhance customer service. with easier

navigation, better speed, and increased stability.

American Airlines is demonstrating the initiative

and forward thinking necessary to create a competi-

tive advantage in the B2C Internet space by leveraging

the underlying state-of-the-art infrastructure.

Management realized that the technologies and

solutions appropriate five years ago are no longer the

underpinnings of a successful e-commerce strategy.

ATG Relationship Management Platform has allowed

AA.com to quickly improve its customer relationships

and it is a critical factor in helping AA.com lay a solid

foundation for long-term success.

AMERICAN AIRLINES PROFILE

Industry Travel & Leisure

Site www.aa.com

Application ATG RelationshipManagement Platform

Business Profile American, American Eagleand the AmericanConnection carriers servemore than 250 cities in 41 countries with 4,400daily flights. American's oneworld alliance ofinternational carriers offers service to 550 citiesWorldwide. Customers can find personalizednews, information and travel offers on American'saward-winning Web site, AA.com -- the best placeto check fares and book tickets online. OnlyAmerican provides More Room ThroughoutCoach for More Coach Passengers.