From Azure to Microsoft Teams: Gol Creates Intelligent and Integrated Data Solution for Revenue-Generating Areas

Founded in 2001, Gol Linhas Aéreas is the largest Brazilian airline by number of passengers, with a 36% market share. It operates more than 715 daily flights, operating at 72 airports in Brazil and with 13 international destinations, and is the third largest company in terms of aircraft fleets, with more than 145 units.

In recent years, the company has been undergoing a digital transformation, modernizing its structure and operations – with the goal of doing more with less. In this process, Gol began to review and reorganize its data solutions to meet new demands. 

Data platform on Azure supporting Gol’s digital transformation

For three years, Gol has been building a new data platform in search of a solution capable of equipping revenue-generating areas with new ways to access, present data and generate operational insights.

“We have a multi-point data architecture stack, we don’t follow a simple flow, because the data we consume doesn’t come from a single source. Thus, we use different strategies, technologies, and methods to capture this data in the fastest and most secure way, aiming to generate the best possible outcome,” explains Daniel Caringi, Data Analytics Manager at Gol.

The platform is supported by Azure, where the data lake resides in blob storage. Azure Databricks extracts this data, and Azure Data Factory orchestrates it all. Azure Logic Apps plays the role of low code, performing a series of automations in that chain and bringing speed to the process. Data visualization is done through Power BI and Microsoft Excel tools, as well as Microsoft Teams with intelligent chatbots for different areas.

The solution is further complemented by internally developed algorithms, encompassing flights, customers, bookings and other information in a short time to make important decisions and thus accurately generate revenue for the company. 

Daniel assesses that the solution has been fruitful for Gol and emphasizes the learning ability of its programmers, who gained more expertise with the partner. “It’s a super positive partnership that helps us make more and more progress. We bring assertiveness in the processes and update time of the best data available on the computer screen,” he says.

Diverse centralized data that generates insights for new business

Eduardo Martin, Data & Analytics Executive Manager at Gol, explains that Microsoft’s choice as a partner of this transformation process is nothing new. 

"Years ago, the choice of Microsoft was initially based on a cost-benefit issue. Over time, it is remarkable that there is better performance and cost, and to this day we are very careful about this partnership, because it has a great capacity to generate solutions for us,” he says. 

Thus, the new solution was another partnership between Gol and Microsoft that generated positive results for the airline. The new intelligent data platform features rapid evolution by the IT team and even directly reaches the revenue-generating teams that have gained in their decision-making. 

With many changed internal processes, creating greater operational efficiency in a practical way, Gol can check its revenue in near real-time, with a strong analytical strategy and a pioneering and sophisticated integration. 

“This change takes a disruptive approach and enables a number of competitive advantages. One of the recently developed projects is the customization of its offers, and the email opening rate and clicks on recommendations are twice as high as the opening rate without recommendations,” he says. “This technology allows us to work on pricing and updating revenue for sales and marketing with much higher gains,” he concludes.  

Gol now works to extend the reach of this solution with new machine learning and AI technologies working on data democratization for its employees and executives.