Technically Speaking - Katri Harra-Salonen of Finnair

Katri Harra-Salonen, Finnair

Katri Harra-Salonen is a seasoned digital transformation exec, joining Finnair in March 2016 as its first chief digital officer. She previously ran Umbrella Strategic Advisory and Fjord, a business arm of Accenture.

For our November theme, PhocusWire talks to technology heads on the challenges of their roles and the rapid pace of change in travel technology and distribution.

What emerging technologies do you think will have the biggest impact on your business in the next decade?

As we have now implemented mobile across the company the next big thing will be around intelligence - I would say artificial intelligence, machine learning and even just doing data and analytics right will have a huge impact on our business.

Operating an airline business creates large amounts of data on how our operations, people and aircraft; or about how our customers interact with us both prior, during and after their travel.

Having the ability to better make use of this data and augmenting our processes and people with better use of AI will have a huge impact both on the our bottom line through efficiency gains, but also on our customer and employee experience through better and more personalized services.

Another space I am following curiously is around experiences, what technology will be able to enrich the experience of travelling in the future – augmented reality is really interesting for example.

When you look at voice, blockchain, machine learning, AI - which do you see having the greatest impact on travel in the shortest time?

We are trying to be both strategic and pragmatic about new technologies at the same time.

According to our technology road map, we see that the time for starting to reap the benefits from the promising tests and proofs of concepts we have done in the field of AI is now.

We see machine learning as one of the elements of AI, and will make use of it wherever relevant. 

There is no doubt that voice will become a relevant new way for our customers to interact with our digital services during next one to three years, here our home market is somewhat behind native English speaking markets due to slower roll-out of local language (Finnish, Swedish) voice UI's from relevant big players, such as Google and Apple. 

We have embarked on our first blockchain experiments, mainly currently in the field of Finnair Cargo and logistics supply chain.

Being able to move some our other processes, especially flight tickets, to a blockchain will become relevant later on as the technology matures and the airline industry starts adopting some of the now-emerging solutions.

What are the greatest challenges of your role?

My role as a CDO is to open and inspire new thinking around how technology can be utilized for business benefits.

In Finnair context my team is responsible for both leading the transformation and making sure that our technology and digital capabilities, IT systems and ways of working are fit for the purpose.

The questions on my desk range from strategy to implementation and from people to technologies. 

The big thing I work with continuously is storytelling – making the world of digital and technology visible and understandable to everyone and making sure everyone at the company is part of it.

This is the greatest challenge, making sure different perspectives are taken into account and people can take the time to listen, share and understand both what we want to build and how they are a part of it.

It is the only way to change the business in a lasting sustainable way - with people. 

What's your view on big consumer brands (Apple, Amazon, Facebook) and their impact on travel going forward?

If you look at the platforms in general, we think that they have already had a large impact on travel.

People share there traveling experiences on travel and travel-related brands on various platform, they share their pictures and holiday experiences with their social circles, they review services, restaurants, hotels, etc. on various platforms and give instant feedback on the service they have received.

The big online platforms play a key role in the future of travel as well, and I would encourage travel companies to follow also very closely what is happening in Asia - for example the convenience of experience that a Chinese consumer gets through WeChat or Alibaba are already surpassing many European/U.S. platforms.  

I also think it is important to follow the consumer brands in terms of investments, this give a good picture of where we can expect new services or technologies in the coming years.

Will there ever really be a seamless traveler experience?

Naturally. Why would the travel industry not follow the same trend as other industries on their path to digitalization.

Travel is a very large ecosystem play already today and a lot of actors contribute to the experience the customer ultimately gets.

Thus it is important to look at how we work, not just everyone in their own companies but in our ecosystems. It is very important to be able to see the world through these lenses and be not juts open to cooperation, but also ambitious about it. Nobody creates value alone.   

Think for example of your personal banking experience today vs. what it was 15 years ago.

The applications that the more modern banks have pushed out have made the day to day management of personal finances and payments really easly and seamless.

Despite structural challenges, we strongly believe this is the same path that travel industry will follow. 

Do CTOs/CDOs in travel companies now have the standing they should with the CEO, do you see those partnerships working effectively generally in the industry?

I can only answer from my perspective, where we have had a very close relationship and worked through our digital strategy in quite a detail together with my colleagues in the management team and of course our CEO.

But in more general terms it is extremely important to have the support and direction from the CEO, when working with such strategic issues as digital and technology.

Not all companies have this kind of position in the management team even, which I find difficult to understand. 

What single bit of advice would you give an experienced technologist from another sector who is pondering a move into the travel industry?

Travel is one of the largest consumer industries, and by definition, very international.

Anybody who is interested in developing great digital consumer experiences and e-commerce operations will find the travel industry an very interesting challenge - both because of its scale but also due to some of its inherent complexity due to the networked travel ecosystem of big and small actors.

Creating simple and elegant customer solutions from this complexity should be an interesting challenge to any technology professional.  

How do you get the buy in of the board when you want to get more budget for technology or digital initiatives?

Digital and technology both need to be part of any corporate strategy.

As one of the main enablers of almost any business today you need to argument based on a clear vision and strategy and have a compelling business case to back up the investment in question.

If the strategic foundation is built right and shared, you should be able to argument for the investments needed. But you need to be able to tell a story and show how you want to turn it into reality.

The benefits need to be clear.   

It has been said that airlines are currently going through their greatest wave of disruption to date and it's all about technology - would you agree and why? 

To judge about the size of disruption needs to be left to the history writers – but I have no doubt that this is one of the most interesting times filled with opportunities and threats for any airline!

Right now it is worth to work with a bit longer vision and align the detailed strategic plan as you go along. Technology will change the world and our industry in the coming 10 to 20 years, it always has.

We just don’t take the time to think about history and draw parallels between what has happened earlier.

What makes our time different is speed of change - the nature of the global market and the fact that strategic and customer facing changes travel in nanoseconds in the digital space.

There is plenty of space for disruption around us. 

What is Finnair's greatest technology threat right now and what is its greatest technology opportunity? 

Our greatest opportunity is the team – our personnel that is curious and ready to implement technology and take it into use.

This is an asset we value highly when we talk about technology. But also our experienced, motivated and diverse team of technology professionals (developers, IT professionals, designers, data scientists, product owners, architects etc.) that we have been able to attract over the past few years. 

On hindsight, I would say one of our greatest threats is the before-mentioned inherent complexity of the networked and interconnected airline industry.

We as an industry need to be able to advance and renew our joint standards and ways of working faster than before, so that we can better answer the ever-growing and justified demand from our customers on an even better digital travel experience.