MAG's digital transformation take off with Microsoft

Manchester Airports Group (MAG) has today featured as the subject of a Microsoft case study, documenting UK’s largest airport group’s digital transformation over the last 12 months.

Microsoft, which commissions four case studies a year to showcase how its suite of tools are used in the workplace, chose to focus this time on MAG and its large, non-stop operation. The digital transformation spans both operational and office-based colleagues, meaning every aspect of the business will feel its benefit, and so too will passengers.

MAG, which owns and operates Manchester, London Stansted and East Midlands airports welcomed more than 60 million passengers in 2019, with operations running 24 hours a day, 365 days a year across five terminals, and four runways.

As the coronavirus pandemic had an unprecedented effect on the aviation sector, passenger numbers across the Group fell by more than 90%. MAG acted quickly to mitigate the large financial pressures it was set to face, but continued to be driven by innovation, and looked towards the future. As day-to-day operations reduced to their lowest, MAG seized the chance to implement Microsoft’s range of tools and applications which meant that when passenger numbers increased once again, operations across the business could run seamlessly, enhanced by Microsoft Azure, Surface devices, Microsoft 365 and Power Platform.

Nicholas Woods, Chief Information Officer, MAG said: “Despite the challenges of the last year we are a forward-thinking business, and so when we saw the opportunity to use this quiet period to do something exciting with the way we use technology across MAG – we had to take it.

“With this transformation, we’ve enhanced the way we’re able to share data, collaborate and communicate - which is so important when you’re a large, multi-location business like MAG. It’s not just our colleagues who will benefit from this transformation, our passengers will too, making their journeys through our airports easier than ever before.

“Its great to see our digital and physical transformations come together too, with our new Terminal 2 extension at Manchester Airport an example of how Microsoft’s tools can be used in a new state of the art facility.

“I’m proud to have seen this transformation come to life in what has been an extremely difficult year for our business, and I’m excited to see how it’s going to drive us forward as we recover.”

Link to the case study: https://news.microsoft.com/en-gb/features/tech-is-taking-off-at-manchester-airports-group/