Managing Information Technology

Case Study II-2 • Real-Time Business Intelligence at Continental Airlines 291

the general ledger is closed). Other products include SAS’s
Clementine for data mining and Teradata’s Campaign
Manager for campaign management.

Real-Time Data Sources
The warehouse’s real-time data sources range from the
mainframe reservation system, to satellite feeds transmit-
ted from airplanes, to a central customer database. For
example, files of reservation data are sent from a main-
frame application on an hourly basis. Within the reserva-
tion system, the records are not structured in a useful way
for analysis. The records are leg-based instead of trip-
based (i.e., a trip recognizes a passenger’s true origin and
destination), and they are stored in a hierarchical format
that cannot be easily queried. Therefore, a passenger name
record (PNR) server application reads each file into mem-
ory and changes the format of the records from a leg-based
perspective to one that includes origin and destination
information. The PNR server application then sends the
updated records to the warehouse. Passenger data are ref-
erenced by many applications, so it is important to control
this critical master data.
Other data feeds are streams of real-time data. The
flight data (called FSIR, or flight system information
record) is sent real-time from the airplanes via satellite to
an operations control center system, which supports the
command center for Continental where the actual flights
are coordinated. FSIR data may include time estimates for
arrival, the exact time of lift-off, aircraft speed, etc. This

data is captured by a special computer and sent within

seconds to the warehouse.

Other data sources are pushed real-time by the

sources themselves. For example, Continental’s reservations

system, One Pass frequent-flier program, Continental.com,

and customer service applications all directly update a cen-

tral customer database. Then, every change that is made to a

customer record is sent to the warehouse.

The Data Warehouse Team

Continental has 15 people on its data warehouse team.

They are responsible for managing the warehouse, devel-

oping and maintaining the infrastructure, data modeling,

developing and maintaining ETL processes, and working

with the business units. The organization chart for the data

warehouse staff is shown in Exhibit 7.

Data Warehouse Governance

The Data Warehouse Steering Committee provides direc-

tion and guidance for the data warehouse. It is a large,

senior-level committee with 30 members, most at the

director level and above. The members come from

the business areas supported by the warehouse and are the

spokespersons for their areas. The warehouse staff meets

with the committee to inform and educate the members

about warehouse-related issues. In turn, the members

identify opportunities for the warehouse staff to become

involved with the business areas. They also help the

warehouse team justify and write requests for additional

Data Warehouse Director

Infrastructure and

Application

Development

(2 employees)

Infrastructure and

Application

Development

(5 employees)

User Support

(4 employees)

Data Warehouse

Manager—Miami

Master Data

Modeler

Data Warehouse

Manager—Houston

EXHIBIT 7 The Data Warehouse Organization Chart