About our customer

Lufthansa Cargo is the dedicated cargo division of Lufthansa, one of the world’s leading airlines. As a major player in the global air freight industry, Lufthansa Cargo specializes in transporting a wide range of goods and commodities worldwide. With a vast network of destinations spanning across continents, Lufthansa Cargo operates an extensive fleet of freighter aircraft and utilizes the belly capacity of Lufthansa passenger planes, ensuring efficient and reliable transportation solutions.

Key facts & figures:

4.6 billion euros of sales revenue in 2022

530,000 tons of freight per year around the world

More than 300 destinations in 100 + countries

4200+ employees

Challenge

Lufthansa Cargo faces a unique challenge in terms of product complexity due to the diverse range of items they handle. In addition to transporting general goods, they are entrusted with the shipment of living beings such as cats, dogs, horses, and even delicate cargo like vaccines and flowers. They even transported highly sensitive life support systems for astronauts in 2018 that were sent to the ISS space station. The intricate nature of their operations therefore, necessitates meticulous tracking and management of a vast array of data.

Undoubtedly, Lufthansa Cargo recognized the complexity of its data landscape and identified the urgent need to transform into a data-driven company. Indeed, by 2025 they aim to generate value from data faster and more efficiently. Their desired outcomes include:

Implement a single Cargo Data Platform to integrate data from over 100 various sources in real-time.

Democratize data access to all employees that work with data for them to better build their data hypothesis, models, and use cases.

Put in place Data Governance roles across their data teams for better clearer responsibilities based on existing competencies.

Simplify communication between IT and the business by providing user-friendly solutions for the analytics department to ultimately promote data literacy across the organization.

© 2023 Lufthansa Cargo x Zeenea – Webinar – All Rights Reserved

Lufthansa Cargo faced a significant challenge with data sources that were not automatically synched with their analytics (Modular cloud-based platform) and BI platforms (On-premise DWH in the Lift&Shift process). Furthermore, their analytics and BI platforms lacked synchronization, resulting in disjointed documentation, varying approaches, and overlapping data.

Recognizing the criticality of the situation, Lufthansa Cargo identified the need for a data catalog as the vital bridge between their analytics and BI platforms.

Solution

Implementing a data catalog was deemed essential to streamline their data landscape, ensure seamless connectivity, and harmonize both the IT and business teams. As a consequence, Lufthansa Cargo made a well-informed decision to select Zeenea Data Discovery Platform and its data catalog solution based on several key factors:

Focus on Discoverability: Zeenea’s emphasis on data discovery and cataloging significantly simplifies the process for employees to navigate and locate their data assets, regardless of their location or role within the organization. Additionally, the solution’s low entry barrier ensures swift implementation and seamless integration, eliminating the risk of becoming entangled in intricate governance configuration intricacies.

Usability: Zeenea’s user interface was designed to prioritize user-friendliness and accessibility, steering away from solely technical features. The platform offers robust semantic search capabilities, empowering users to swiftly locate specific data assets by leveraging relevant keywords. Additionally, Zeenea provides visual and graphical components that aid in comprehending complex information. These intuitive and visually-driven features enhance users’ understanding of data relationships and promote efficient data exploration within Lufthansa Cargo’s data ecosystem.

Openness and Adaptability: Zeenea’s data catalog solution offered a simple yet scalable metamodel, allowing Lufthansa Cargo to customize and adapt the solution to their specific requirements. Moreover, the inclusion of import and export functionalities, alongside APIs, ensured effortless integration with diverse systems and data sources. This seamless integration not only improved data accessibility but also automated documentation tasks, enhancing overall operational efficiency for Lufthansa Cargo.

Community-Driven Improvements: Lufthansa Cargo valued Zeenea’s commitment to continuous improvement through community-driven enhancements. This ensured that the solution would evolve and incorporate new features and capabilities based on industry best practices and user feedback.

Pricing Model: Zeenea’s pricing model aligned with Lufthansa Cargo’s needs: The initial investment was small, making it more accessible for adoption. As Lufthansa Cargo’s user base and data catalog usage grew, the pricing model scaled accordingly. Additionally, the inclusion of additional scanners at no additional cost and ongoing customer support added further value to their investment.

Lufthansa Cargo’s journey with Zeenea

Lufthansa Cargo has ambitious plans to integrate additional technical systems using Zeenea in the coming months. The company has a robust expansion pipeline in place, aiming to import a wider range of analytical data through connectors and APIs. This strategic move will enhance their technical framework and enrich their data ecosystem.

Furthermore, Lufthansa Cargo is actively promoting catalog adoption among the more technical teams within the organization. By fostering data collaboration across the entire data community, they aim to demonstrate the value that the Zeenea tool can bring to their data management processes. This concerted effort aligns with their vision of maximizing the benefits and potential of their data assets throughout the company.

© 2023 Lufthansa Cargo x Zeenea – Webinar – All Rights Reserved