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Xamarin-Case-Study-easyJet
Xamarin-Case-Study-easyJet
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“<br />
This app makes it easier for our Customer<br />
Hosts to deliver a customer service experience<br />
that people will remember by providing clear,<br />
accurate information in a timely manner. In<br />
the future we see having a whole new world of<br />
upselling with more people walking the floor<br />
offering services to customers.<br />
<strong>”</strong><br />
highlights<br />
—Christopher Davies, Project Manager, easyJet<br />
<br />
Enabled Customer Hosts to provide<br />
customers with clear, accurate, and<br />
timely information about flights,<br />
delays, and more.<br />
<br />
Created a differentiated customer<br />
service experience from the moment a<br />
customer sees an easyJet representative.<br />
<br />
Supported rapid release cycles across<br />
multiple platforms to keep the user<br />
experience up-to-date and release new<br />
functionality to market quickly on any device.<br />
<br />
Created a foundation for future<br />
innovation in mobile apps to make<br />
easyJet even more successful.
About<br />
easyJet is one of Europe’s leading airlines, operating on over 600 routes across<br />
more than 30 countries with a fleet of over 200 Airbus aircraft. The company<br />
employs over 8,000 people, including more than 2,000 pilots and 4,500 cabin<br />
crew. In 2014, easyJet flew more than 60 million passengers, and over 300<br />
million people are within a one hour drive of an easyJet airport.<br />
In the competitive world of air travel, the customer experience is key, and<br />
easyJet prides itself on providing a simple, streamlined end-to-end process.<br />
This is especially important at the baggage drop, where the easyJet Customer<br />
Host helps passengers start their journey. “98% of our bookings are online,<br />
and 95% of our passengers check in online,<strong>”</strong> says Chris Davies, Project<br />
Manager at easyJet, “so the Customer Host is the first person a passenger<br />
sees. They provide our customers with important information, such as flight<br />
locations and the existence and causes of delays.<strong>”</strong><br />
Creating an app to support great service<br />
Customer Hosts are the face of easyJet, so in order to improve their ability<br />
to provide passengers with the information and services they need, easyJet<br />
decided to develop a mobile app called Customer Host Assist. “Using<br />
a mobile device, Customer Host Assist helps Customer Hosts provide<br />
information about bookings, find out the timing and causes of delays, and sell<br />
additional services.<strong>”</strong><br />
In order to create the application, easyJet hired Xamarin partner EPAM to<br />
handle development. EPAM put together a team of three developers and in<br />
just two months created a proof of concept version of the app that is<br />
now being tested in several airports.
Cross-platform code sharing drives<br />
choice of development platform<br />
easyJet wanted apps that could span<br />
platforms and support its current bring-yourown-device<br />
(BYOD) environment, where<br />
workers select mobile devices from different<br />
platforms depending on their preferences.<br />
In order to achieve this at a reasonable cost<br />
while maintaining rapid release cycles and<br />
improvements, easyJet decided to take EPAM’s<br />
suggestion that the project be built using<br />
Xamarin.<br />
EPAM estimates that up to 60% of the app’s<br />
code will be shared across iOS and Android.<br />
“We have a lot of business logic that can be<br />
shared,<strong>”</strong> says Ivan Kirkorau, Solutions Architect,<br />
EPAM. The entire idea from the outset was to<br />
have a cross-platform app, and the easyJet<br />
team didn’t want to invest in writing and<br />
maintaining three separate apps when they<br />
could have one codebase for all three. This also<br />
allows them to release more frequently because<br />
updates to the code don’t have to be replicated<br />
three times in different languages.<br />
The app has a Microsoft Azure backend and<br />
makes use of a portable class library that<br />
enables the company to share code across<br />
desktop and mobile applications. Xamarin<br />
Insights is used to catch exceptions during<br />
development.<br />
Kirkorau enthusiastically recommends Xamarin.<br />
“Xamarin enables .NET developers to work<br />
on interesting mobile projects and use new<br />
technologies without having to learn a new<br />
language. In fact, sometimes Xamarin actually<br />
delivers better results than native development.<strong>”</strong><br />
Maryia Shalimava, Project Manager at EPAM<br />
adds, “From a business perspective, Xamarin<br />
gives you much more flexibility to extend<br />
your applications.<strong>”</strong><br />
“<br />
Xamarin enables .NET developers to work<br />
on interesting mobile projects and use new<br />
technologies without having to learn a new<br />
language. In fact, sometimes Xamarin actually<br />
delivers better results than native development.<br />
<strong>”</strong><br />
—Ivan Kirkorau, Solutions Architect, EPAM
A customer-centric approach<br />
Davies believes the most important thing in creating an<br />
app is listening to customers. “As developers, we sometimes<br />
forget we work for an airline. It’s not just customers buying<br />
tickets... it’s our ground crew, our staff, the people on the<br />
floor. It’s important to see what they actually do so you give<br />
them what they truly need and not just what you think they<br />
need.<strong>”</strong><br />
This, along with the ease of cross-platform development<br />
provided by EPAM through Xamarin, has helped the<br />
company think more expansively about the place of apps<br />
in their business model. As Davies explains, “Ultimately, this<br />
app is a base to see how well it’s taken. We want to create<br />
other apps, such as one to assist our ground crew. More<br />
people are going to be using larger phones, and we want to<br />
use Xamarin to create a vault of apps that can help them do<br />
their daily jobs no matter what device they use.<strong>”</strong><br />
About Xamarin<br />
Xamarin is the new standard for enterprise<br />
mobile development. No other platform<br />
enables businesses to reach all major devices<br />
across iOS, Android, Mac, and Windows with<br />
100% fully native apps from a single code<br />
base. With Xamarin, businesses standardize<br />
mobile app development in C#, share an<br />
average of 75% source code across platforms,<br />
and leverage their existing skills, teams, tools<br />
and code to rapidly deliver great apps with<br />
broad reach. Xamarin is used by more than<br />
100 Fortune 500 companies in 120 countries,<br />
and has over one million unique developer<br />
downloads.<br />
For more information visit xamarin.com,<br />
read our blog, and follow us on Twitter at<br />
@xamarinhq.<br />
“<br />
More people are going to<br />
be using larger phones, and<br />
we want to use Xamarin to<br />
create a portfolio of apps<br />
that can help them do their<br />
daily jobs no matter what<br />
device they use.<br />
<strong>”</strong><br />
—Christopher Davies,<br />
Project Manager, easyJet