Analytics Case Study

From Data Silos to Sky-High Efficiency: Air Peace’s Journey with Microsoft Azure

Customer Overview & Challenges

Founded over a decade ago in Lagos, Air Peace has become Nigeria’s largest airline and a rising force in Africa’s aviation market. With a 52-aircraft fleet, 23 domestic and regional routes, and a 32% market share, the airline generated over ₦217 billion in revenue in 2023/2024, a 441% increase from 2020/2021. Air Peace is also Africa’s 4th most valuable airline brand, according to ICAN’s 2024 Aviation Sector Report.

Despite its strong growth, Air Peace was held back by a fragmented data environment. Critical systems such as CRM, ERP, crew scheduling, and operations functioned in silos. This created inefficiencies, delayed reporting, and increased operational costs. The impact was most visible in three key areas:

  • Crew Management: Manual reconciliation between crew scheduling (APM) and payroll (Dynamics NAV) systems led to overtime and compensation costs 18–25% higher than industry peers with integrated platforms.
  • Fuel Procurement: Lack of real-time dashboards led to outdated fuel pricing decisions, costing over ₦1.2 billion annually due to missed opportunities in price drops.
  • Revenue Reporting: Disconnected financial systems required 300+ hours per month of manual reconciliation, delaying forex hedging and resulting in a 15% YoY decline in operating margins during the 2023 Naira devaluation.

Air Peace recognized the need for a unified data solution to enable real-time decision-making, improve cost efficiency, and position the company for its Pan-African expansion plans.

Solution

To address these challenges, Air Peace partnered with Wragby Business Solutions, being a certified Microsoft Azure partner, to modernize its data architecture using Azure Synapse Analytics. The goal was to create a centralized, cloud-based platform that could break down data silos and enable agile, data-driven operations.

Wragby implemented an analytics solution combining:

  • Azure Data Factory for real-time ETL automation
  • Delta Lake for unified data storage
  • Power BI dashboards refreshed every 15 minutes for actionable insights
  • Microsoft Purview for data governance and compliance
  • Event Hubs and Data Lake Gen2 for ingesting and managing large-scale operational data streams

The integration extended across customer feedback (Zoho Survey), flight bookings (Amadeus), maintenance systems (APM), and financial systems (Maureva, Dynamics NAV). The hybrid architecture was designed to support both structured (sales, operations) and semi-structured (customer surveys, ATC data) data for real-time analytics.

Customer Benefits
The impact of the Azure Synapse implementation was transformative:

  • Report generation time dropped from 72 hours to a few minutes, saving over 200 hours per month and enabling quicker decisions on route optimization.
  • On-time departures increased by 15% due to faster access to operational data.
  • Fuel procurement accuracy improved, saving ₦30 million during seasonal volatility.
  • Premium bookings grew by 28% and NPS scores increased by 15 points, driven by personalized insights.
  • IT cost savings of about $50,000 per year by eliminating redundant infrastructure.
  • Scalability improved during holiday traffic spikes, supporting 40% more data without performance loss.

With this transformation, Air Peace turned fragmented systems into a dynamic, cloud-native platform capable of real-time analytics and rapid decision-making. The platform’s compliance with NCAA and global standards also enhanced stakeholder confidence, crucial during the airline’s ₦50B capital raise.

Scaling Impact with Wragby
What began as a solution for Air Peace has become a scalable model. Wragby has since adapted this modular Azure architecture for other industries, including airport operations, cargo logistics, hospitality forecasting, and manufacturing inventory management. By turning complex data workflows into reusable modules like predictive maintenance and dynamic pricing, Wragby has reduced deployment times for other sectors by almost 50%.

Looking Ahead
In collaboration with Microsoft and Wragby, Air Peace is not just flying high, it’s making data its co-pilot. Through Azure Synapse Analytics and an integrated Microsoft ecosystem, the airline has unlocked new levels of agility, savings, and scalability. This underscores how strategic technology adoption can transform operations, drive growth, and set new standards in Africa’s aviation industry.

Client:
Titan Trust Bank
Category:
Date:

October 10, 2024