HungaroControl provides air navigation services in Hungarian airspace and in the upper airspace over Kosovo (as assigned by NATO). It has around 750 employees and an annual revenue of €100M+.
The company trains air traffic controllers and carries out air navigation research and development. Its work has led to technology that supports innovation in flight safety, capacity increases and reduction in costs for airlines.
Creating a data strategy to support innovation
To continue to be at the forefront of innovation, HungaroConol knew it needed to make better use of the data at its disposal. It needed to make the data more accessible for its employees. That’s where Zenitech came in.
Our goal was to make data analysis and accessibility easier for employees by creating an enterprise-wide data strategy.
The project launched during pandemic restrictions, so much of the collaboration between the data scientists, managers, department heads and employees involved happened over Teams.
Zenitech’s approach
The data workshop
We needed to understand how the client currently worked with its data, so we held a one-day data workshop to go through the different roles and tech and soft skills needed to work with the data. We also held Q&A sessions, which helped us identify good candidates for initial interviews.
Employee interviews
Interviews were especially important tools in creating a sound data strategy – we needed to hear what was going on at the employee level to help us create a strategy that would stick. Interviewees were selected from each field of expertise and we paid special attention to departments like company strategy, law, privacy and cybersecurity.
From there, we asked them about how they used data and asked various questions important to specific functions. All interviewees had the questions ahead of time so that they could prepare detailed answers.
Mapping data use and developing use cases
After the interviews, we summarised the data sources and the relationship between them, the source systems and data owners. We also looked at potential use cases, which we prioritised based on the expected return-on-investment.
Mapping the analytics platform architecture
With a clear picture of the data requirements, we started planning the logical architecture of the analytics platform. We worked with IT to map the network infrastructure, assess protocols and design data extraction from each system (including customised systems to accommodate partner systems).
Setting out the project roadmap
At the end of the consultation project, Zenitech created a project roadmap that covered the next five business quarters. The roadmap contained the technical tasks, the proof of concepts
and data products supporting the platform’s development and the employees’ training.
As a result of the project, HungaroControl had a clear picture of how they used their data, where they were getting data from, and what the biggest hurdles were in accessing it.
Zenitech also provided them with a list of opportunities (possible PoCs) where data was must, but data access was a roadblock to validate the idea.
Zenitech also provided an architecture for the analytics platform with specifications for different environments and hardware sizing, so that budget allocation could be done appropriately.
