In the clouds or on the ground, Okta delivers simple and secure access for Transavia's workforce

Keeping prices low with a model that prioritises efficiency  

Whether they are flying for a holiday or to see family, European travellers are increasingly turning to budget airlines to get them where they need to go. In the past decade, the market share of low-cost carriers in the region has grown by 20% to almost 45% of all seat capacity (2020). 

Founded in 2007, Transavia France is a subsidiary of the KLM-Air France group, wholly owned by Air France. Flying from Paris-Orly, Nantes, Lyon and Montpellier airports, Transavia transports millions of passengers every year to around 100 destinations in Europe and around the Mediterranean Basin. 

With a mission to "make low cost feel good," Transavia keeps its customers happy by delivering great service while keeping ticket prices down. To do that, it maintains low margins by flexibly managing its resources to enable it to respond quickly to changing circumstances. This approach also extends to the contractors and partners it chooses to work with. Around half of its 2,000 salaried employees work in cabin-based roles such as air stewards.

"We have annual peaks in demand that stretch from March through the summer, with another peak around December and January for the ski season," explains Damien Rossetti, Domain Manager - Corporate for Transavia. "During those periods, our workforce expands significantly across all roles, which means we have to onboard them as quickly as possible."  

Leveraging Okta, Transavia has found the perfect balance of simplicity and flexibility for its users, as well as making onboarding and offboarding processes easier to manage. With the support of Okta implementation partners Mobiapps and Point Base, it's making the most of the entire Okta ecosystem as its workforce grows.

The key factors: simplicity, security, and automation 

In choosing an IAM solution, simplicity was a key criteria for Transavia. Within the aeroplane cabin, employees need to access their accounts with maximum ease and minimum delays. "Cabin attendants need rapid, easy access to their applications to fulfil tasks such as preparing for flights or entering post-flight information," explains Rossetti. "That process has to be seamless so they can connect as quickly as possible." 

Another key goal was to strengthen Transavia's cybersecurity, as it's in the process of modernising its infrastructure, and is prioritising cloud-based solutions where possible to match the needs of its workforce on the move. "We need an IAM solution that integrates easily with tools such as Microsoft Office 365 as well as sector-specific applications, and offers robust authentication," says Rossetti.  

The most important aspect, however, is Okta's range of tools for automating tasks and processes. "Our infrastructure is complex, with two separate Human Resources Information Systems (HRISs) and different access requirements for ground and air staff," Rossetti adds. "Okta is ahead of its competitors in enabling users to manage workflows, consolidate databases, and automate processes."  

Delivering secure access for ground staff and crew 

Employees are now able to access most of Transavia's applications, including Office 365 and its other key applications via Okta using Single Sign-On (SSO), authenticating their log-in using Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA). "More than 85% of our employees work in roles that require them to be constantly on the move," explains Rossetti. "They often change geographical zones, and work primarily from portable devices such as tablets and mobile phones, which is why we need flexible Okta's authentication criteria."

With Okta, Transavia can adapt its MFA criteria according to the user profile, their usage, or the device, whether that be for a stationary office worker logging in to a PC or a mobile flight-attendant working off-line on a tablet.  Factors such as a security question are popular with ground staff, while air-based employees appreciate the Okta Verify integration with biometric factors such as Face ID and Touch ID. And of course, Adaptive MFA also enables Transavia to put in place behaviour detection policy rules appropriate to the user's expected location-crucial for a workforce that's constantly on the move.

Automating complex processes

To automate its application provisioning processes, Transavia uses Universal Directory, as well as Lifecycle Management. "Onboarding and offboarding is automated as any changes in our HR information systems are automatically detected by Okta," says Rossetti. "That's taken the pressure off our IT support team, as well as eliminating errors and security risks." 

Okta Workflows helps Transavia to dynamically adapt an employee's profile as it evolves, or as they pass through the training process required to fly their planes, for example. "A seasonal pilot first needs to pass through training, then supervised flights, before flying independently. They might leave, then return for the following season," says Rossetti. Each stage requires a different set of access criteria, which can be easily controlled using Okta Workflows. "The interface is so easy to use, it's simple to set up the correct chronology, and it removes all the complexity from the access management process. By managing onboarding and offboarding processes dynamically, we have better access control and better visibility of employees' arrivals and departures, both of which are essential for meeting certain regulatory requirements in our sector." 

Leveraging the expertise of Mobiapps and Point Base

Because of its need to connect multiple HRSIs within a complex infrastructure, including one that uses a thick client, in 2021 Transavia turned to implementation partners Mobiapps and Point Base. It wanted to fine-tune its Okta deployment, making Okta the master. That has made it easier for its IT and HR teams to understand the flow of data and eliminate manual errors and the security risks they entail. 

"Mobiapps and Point Base had already undertaken similar projects for other clients, and we wanted to leverage their expertise to make the changes we wanted without any disruptions to our processes," says Rossetti. "They gave us the confidence to try out Okta Workflows, which is a great tool."

Helping IT teams to support company growth  

Previously, when seasonal employees began to arrive at the beginning of the summer season, the IT support team would struggle to keep up with onboarding tasks. Now, they are no longer under pressure, as Okta can handle the workload for them. "When between 250 and 300 seasonal employees arrived on a single day in 2021, with dozens of people arriving and leaving over the weeks that followed, we were very glad to have Okta in place," says Rossetti. "It saved us around 3 weeks of solid work on onboarding-offboarding processes." 

Transavia has also gained greater visibility over its infrastructure, as it now has a log of what tools users are using, and that's helping it to control costs, particularly in relation to its Office 365 licences. "With our extremely complex populations of users, we previously were not able to assign Office 365 licences in a granular way, but we can do that with Okta, which is saving us a considerable sum on licensing costs," says Rossetti.  

Scaling effortlessly as Transavia takes off 

As Transavia has recently added a significant number of flights to its schedule, the company is expecting a large intake of seasonal employees for the next summer season. That would have been impossible for the IT team to handle manually, but with Okta, it can simply scale up its existing IAM infrastructure.

Transavia also hopes to integrate as many of its applications with SSO as possible, making use of its broad catalogue of ready-to-use integrations, as well as deploying new Okta Workflows. For example, it plans to enable profiles to be created automatically ahead of employees arriving, with managers intervening only if the employee profile has features outside the typical criteria, lightening the workload for IT teams.   

According to Rossetti, "Developing our use of Okta has activated threads in many directions. It has elevated our general understanding of how to deliver a great user experience for our employees, in a way that wasn't possible with our previous tools."