british airways takes lead in the online revolution with new pricing software from sita
British Airways has always ensured customers enjoyed the best value airfares but it can now optimise these within the same selling day thanks to ground-breaking new software from the aviation IT specialist, SITA. The airline also expects to save millions from the elimination of expensive legacy technology and introduction of state of the art business practices to enable insightful market based pricing.
SITA’s Airfare Insight software allows the airline to make informed fare changes in response to market changes. The competitive advantage is expected to result in a surge in daily traffic on www.ba.com.
Jerry Foran, Senior Manager, Revenue Management at BA, said: “The SITA Airfare Insight product is remarkable. It filters and displays what we decide are important competitor price changes allowing us to respond not just quickly, but in an informed and considered manner, through whatever distribution channel we choose. We can make the best fares available faster than the competition and we also expect to save at least $3 million through the decommissioning of legacy systems. In addition, SITA Airfare Insight allows British Airways to perform a comprehensive ticket audit process leading to a 10% increase in the audit quality generating a potential $6 million each year in recoveries.”
Over 200 million fares are published worldwide at any one time, and typically full-service airlines will update fares throughout their distribution network of GDSs, travel agencies and websites, several times a day. By using SITA’s advanced technology, and a business workflow that has been specially customized to its needs, BA now has a clear picture of what its competitors are doing in the market at any one time to support its decision making. Airfare Insight also provides the tools and workflow to make and execute those decisions far faster, and with fully automated distribution of resulting prices.
Hani El-Assaad, SITA Regional Vice-President, Middle East & Turkey, said: “Working closely with BA, we have been able to provide the fares, pricing tools and workflow enhancements to meet their exact business needs which in turn has enabled them to decommission expensive legacy systems, streamline their decision making process and consolidate their market leading
position. It is a classic example of what we call business transformation - SITA solutions being used to support enhanced processes with a clear commercial payback.
“Airfare Insight is still new to the market and British Airways is one of the largest network carriers to use it to date. The system has been specially customized to meet its needs with new functionality and productivity enhancing workflow being added at regular intervals.”
Foran added: “With the introduction of SITA Airfare Insight BA has been able to simplify the business management of more than a million fares which we publish each year. The new system analyses fares and manages the workflow across multiple departments – revenue management, sales, and outsourced pricing distribution – to ensure the right fares are distributed at the right time, to the right customer.“
