Ordering passes for Zurich Airport digitally

Today companies order and manage their passes, keys and access rights for Zurich Airport entirely digitally – through the “ZRH Center” customer portal. For the airport’s tenants and for the customer service team at Flughafen Zürich AG, the laborious paper route is history.

The starting point

Previously, companies ordered their access rights, passes and keys for Zurich Airport exclusively on paper. The process from handling the form to producing the pass was laborious, error-prone and no longer up to date. As the airport grew and the service centre The Circle went into operation, the administrative effort in customer service increased enormously. At the same time, customers increasingly wanted to place and manage pass orders digitally, simply and efficiently.

In a public tender, xappido ag was awarded the contract at the end of 2018 to deliver a digital platform. The goal: a simple, modern and technically sustainable customer portal for the entire ordering process.

The solution

As solution partner to Flughafen Zürich AG, xappido maps the complete pass ordering process digitally with the “ZRH Center”. The portal consists of two separate systems: customers work with the publicly accessible “ZRH Center”, while customer service handles incoming orders in the separate “ZRH Center Backoffice”. To enable single sign-on, authentication logic and business API were kept strictly apart; after logging in, users choose between different tenants such as a private and a business account.

At its heart is the business logic, which takes account of the individual needs and regulatory requirements of different stakeholder groups. Depending on the product, the company or the person, an order takes a different course – an airport pass, for instance, may involve further screening by Swiss police authorities and the Federal Intelligence Service, and access to security zones changes the sequence again. To make this complexity manageable, the project team analysed every ordering and approval process together with the departments concerned, using UX mockups and clickable prototypes. A shared understanding therefore existed before development began, sources of error were minimised, and sprint planning became simpler.

The customer portal fits seamlessly into the existing system landscape of Flughafen Zürich AG. The central management instrument is SAP: alongside master data, SAP CRM/ERP handles all screening workflows and the assignment of rights in the locking system (Kaba Exos). Several interfaces keep data continuously synchronised in both directions, prevent redundancy and secure central data ownership. Further surrounding systems such as document management systems and communication channels are connected as well – within the airport’s existing on-premises infrastructure, which requires the portal to run in the environment already in place.

Because sensitive and personal data is managed and transmitted through the platform, the “ZRH Center” meets the highest security requirements. Alongside encryption of all data, authorisation applies at several levels with graduated security clearances. In addition, an external IT security company continuously examines the system and the infrastructure for vulnerabilities through code reviews and penetration tests.

The result

Delivery follows an agile approach with SCRUM: working iteratively in sprints makes it possible to respond flexibly to changing requirements and to coordinate closely with departments, project management, external development teams and third-party companies.

The “ZRH Center” has been in productive use since January 2020. Today more than 1,500 users work with the platform and have ordered passes and access products for over 45,000 employees. New customer registration in July 2020 marked the next milestone: since then, new business customers can register directly in the portal and use the services.

This end-to-end system is continuously extended module by module. As part of the digital experience platform, the “ZRH Insider Card” was created, allowing tenants in The Circle to order and manage digital discount cards for their employees. As solution partner, xappido continues to develop the portal together with Flughafen Zürich AG.