Cathay boosts efficiency with expanded automation & AI tools

Cathay is utilising enterprise automation and artificial intelligence from UiPath to improve operational efficiency, reduce manual work, and enhance the travel experience for both passengers and staff.

In response to an increase in air travel demand, Cathay is updating its operations by deploying automation technology across various business functions, including customer service and flight operations.

The company has implemented UiPath's automation solutions in over 20 departments, leveraging more than 160 bots to support daily employee activities.

Cathay's digital initiatives have been recognised with the UiPath AI25 Award, which honours customers using a combination of AI and automation to drive significant organisational outcomes. The award identifies 25 companies globally for their strategic application of these technologies.

Aldric Chau, General Manager Digital, Cathay, said, "We are honoured to be an AI25 Award Winner and are pleased to witness that our investment in AI and automation has turned into fruitful results."

"We continue to innovate through our close collaboration with UiPath to harness the full power of automation, AI and generative AI to ultimately deliver significant outcomes for our customers and to our internal operations. By leveraging AI and automation, we aim to maintain our digital leadership by prioritising a strong customer-centric approach and continuously pursuing innovation."

Richard Chen, Regional Vice President, Greater China at UiPath, commented, "AI-powered automation can help organisations streamline workflows and drive efficiencies, which has huge benefits such as enhanced customer and employee experiences, substantial cost savings, improved accuracy, and increased productivity to drive greater business value."

"It is particularly important for the aviation sector that needs to significantly scale up in order to satisfy the huge demand as travel resurges after the pandemic. We are proud to enable the digital transformation journey at Cathay and look forward to working closely together to continue delivering the strongest outcomes for its employees and customers."

Cathay began adopting the UiPath Platform in 2018 and now deploys advanced UiPath tools, including Action Centre, AI Centre, and Document Understanding to automate manual and repetitive tasks.

These initiatives form part of Cathay's broader digital transformation strategy as the airline rebuilds operations post-pandemic, aiming to redirect employee focus onto higher-value activities.

UiPath's AI and automation have played a key role in managing high-volume, high-intensity processes within Cathay's business units.

Through UiPath Document Understanding, the company has reduced the time required for document processing, improving accuracy and handling a larger volume of processes.

Cathay uses automation to streamline its flight re-seat notification process for passengers, with bots enabling the task to be completed around 20 times faster than previous manual email notification methods.

Automation has also improved back-office operations; for instance, the preparation of tax declarations, which once took approximately three weeks, can now be completed in one to two days using automated systems.

UiPath automation has helped Cathay strengthen compliance, particularly in flight scheduling, where automated reporting has cut reporting time by 50% and reduced human error.

The airline has also introduced Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) for invoice handling in the SAMEA region. Currently, more than 72% of these invoices are processed automatically, reducing overall processing time by a factor of four and freeing staff for more strategic tasks such as managing vendor relationships.

The collaboration between Cathay and UiPath includes exploration into future opportunities in intelligent document processing and process mining.

The airline intends to continue this partnership to empower staff and advance its organisational capabilities as the company adapts to ongoing digital change.