Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) announced the selection of SITA as the sole provider of the airline’s international voice telecommunication services. The agreement will save SAS $3.6m and will provide services to 800 users in 40 locations across 23 countries, reducing SAS’s voice service contracts from over 100 to a single one with SITA.

SAS chose a fully-managed end-to-end voice solution from SITA, the aviation IT specialist. Described as “technology- agnostic”, this solution is designed to ensure that voice services are closely aligned to the requirements of SAS operational staff by stipulating functionality and performance level while leaving the responsibility for selecting and managing the technology to SITA.

Elisabeth Ragna, Chief Financial Officer, SAS said: “As is the case at many airlines, years of evolution at SAS and changing operational requirements had left us with a complex range of systems, providers and contracts for our voice services. With SITA we reduce the complexity, have greater visibility of our costs and will benefit not only from significant cost savings but also greater flexibility to meet ever our ever-changing operational needs.”

SAS has a declared strategy of aligning technologies behind the requirements of operational users and initially engaged SITA Professional Services to carry out an extensive investigation of existing voice systems for both fixed and mobile services. This included the gathering and analysis of usage statistics across the 23 countries in which SAS operates, assessing the current infrastructure and identifying SAS’s current and future business needs.

Rob Watkins, SITA’s Regional Vice President, Northern Europe said: “Our consultants were able to offer options that would deliver SAS improvements in total cost of ownership (TCO), functionality, and service levels. They were also able to identify tactical “quick wins” that could trigger immediate improvements and cost benefits.”

“The result is that SAS have reduced not only costs but also the complexity of management of their voice services across all the countries in which they operate” he added, “reducing their voice contracts from more than one hundred to a single one with SITA.”