Summary:
Our solution empowered the corporate sales and account management team of a global carrier to generate additional revenue and set clear and measurable data points for corporate buyers and TMCs.
The Problem:
Steve the Corporate Sales Manager at a global airline was continuously coming up with challenges from TMCs and corporate clients about the accuracy and timeliness of reporting their numbers. It wasn’t that there were huge inaccuracies in the reports but the way the airline worked meant that they issued some indicative numbers garnered from different sources including PRISM and their internal revenue management system. These were then supplemented by final reports each quarter but were around two or three months behind. All this caused a lot of confusion among his customers both TMCs and large global corporates who were not able to clearly make sense of numbers coming from various sources including their own expense management system. Reconciling that with the TMCs reports and the airline numbers (both interim and final) meant there was no single reference point for the data, and it was an ongoing point of conflict during negotiations.
The Solution:
When the management at their carrier rolled out Airline Metrics this was a huge help for Steve and his team managing corporate customers globally. Firstly for large multinational customers they were able to consolidate all reporting into a single currency regardless of which market the ticket was issued and by which TMC globally. Next, each corporate could be tracked easily without any data processing or data manipulation requirement as Airline Metrics could pull out the reports and graphs for each account from both a ticketed sales and forward flown revenue perspective. In addition, where their was any confusion Steve’s team could easily download tickets with details including coupon reports for each corporate that could be sent to the TMC and corporate within minutes for their reconciliation. The rollout of Airline Metrics also meant a single data point was used by all parties for discussions and at the base level each ticket and segment could be accounted for with complete transperancy. This meant that the final reports that were being generated from the carrier’s Revenue Management system were accepted without much problems by all parties as the Airline Metrics estimates on forward revenue were very close to the final number.
The Result:
Tracking and reporting clarity for each corporate allowed Steve and his team to have great clarity on deals offered to companies. Those performing well were reinforced with extra support from the account managers whilst those underperforming were analysed in more detail for deal support or termination. A clear process-based approach to corporate account management was defined and the team was able to not just set the policies for companies and TMCs but showcase how they were appraised clearly garnering a lot of praise from both corporate buyers and TMCs as one of the most professionally managed carriers. As the process became more entrenched, they found out many cases where fares were made available to companies as part of their negotiations but were never used yet the airline was being blamed for not being competitive. Detailed analysis then showed that there were failure points for different customers at different touch points like fares not loaded by the GDS or TMC consultants not being aware of the fares made available or even the customer’s passengers themselves not knowing about the airline being a preferred supplier. All this resulted in clawing back of several million dollars of corporate high yield revenue which would have gone to the competition without the ability to access detailed corporate level information.
