Ai Editorial: NDC and retailing is about harmonizing IT and ecommerce

 

First Published on 25th May 2016

Ai Editorial: Is PSS really an enigma? Rather than writing off PSS, airlines need to work around their IT set up by fostering harmony between IT and other departments, including e-commerce, writes Ai’s Ritesh Gupta

 

Over the past year, I have spoken to several industry executives including ones from full service carriers about their IT infrastructure and the possible areas of improvement as far as their distribution and data-driven merchandising is concerned.

There is consensus over the fact that if airlines want to avoid being a commodity product they either need to demand that their PSS technology is customer-focused or they start using tech outside the PSS to do this kind of work.

Discussions did invariably touch upon IATA’s NDC standard, which is not mandatory for any airline to focus on, and also the role of PSS.

NDC as a development is interesting as it talks about control over content and offers, and at the same time being customer-centric, too, matching passengers’ intent with right content and offers. As much as control over indirect distribution, including work on apt API strategy that let XML messages in and out of a web service, is paramount, we shouldn’t forget airlines are looking at strengthening their own digital assets, too. If you are in digital domain, you are finding ways to be data-driven, and you need your IT infrastructure to complement it on order to excel in the arena of customer experience and personalisation.  

Here we discuss few issues around PSS and legacy messaging, and how to bring about a positive change towards better control over offers:

PSS isn’t an enigma: One of the core issues where discussions tend to focus on is the current status of the PSS.

When I spoke to an airline IT specialist about the talk around the limitations of legacy infrastructure especially PSS, he pointed out that the mainframe has been written off too many times. “I see the “anti-mainframer” campaigners fixated on removing the “legacy” system without understanding what it does and how it works,” he said. He added, “Many have failed to replace it. Amadeus do not publicise the fact, but they still have a TPF4.1 system behind the scenes some 15 years after purchasing the British Airways and Qantas Mainframe staff and systems. We have the world’s most reliable mainframe real-time systems with massive throughput of tens of thousands of messages per second with fast recovery (z/TPF IPLs in less than 45 seconds) yet there is no GUI with z/TPF or ALCS.”  

“Green on black” works, he asserted. “But Generation Z does not like Green on Black.”

“Getting rid of the “Mainframe” is not the answer. Working with the mainframe, using the immense processing power, high reliability, throughput and recovery, to let the mainframe do what it does best is the way forward.”

Where do IT and e-commerce agree? There is a difference in opinion when one talks to various departments.

As for IATA’s vision, it asserts NDC technical standard provides the opportunity to implement a modular environment where valuable assets are leveraged, out-of-date assets are renovated and new assets can be added easily. In effect, this modular architecture will allow airlines to respond rapidly to changes in their business environment; this is a must for retail organizations. IATA has been working on plans to modernize the multiple and rigid booking, ticketing, delivery and accounting methods with a single, flexible order management process.

An IT professional with over 3 decades of experience says, “The problem I often see is that people who have never used a core PSS system, have never come from the traditional (Swissair and British Airways) Airline Apprentice background of the 1980s where they would work their way up from being a Reservations Agent to an Airport Agent, to a Ticketing Officer to Revenue Management are now making the decisions. Those new people, many from non-airline backgrounds, simply do not understand what the core PSS does. They see a “legacy” system and think it must be replaced.  This approach will fail.” He adds, “The driver is getting to know the top passengers much better than at present. The data is there. The core PSS is not the place to analyse data, but it can be the place to place the offers and incentives to the passenger face to face.”

And this is what an ecommerce executive told me: “Legacy PSS systems should be actually redeveloped almost from scratch if it brings any major improvement, and this is something which isn’t going to happen in a very near future.” 

So digging further the core functionalities of airline IT systems and data management can be improved in following manner:

FSCs have been looking at separate engines and modules such as availability and pricing, customer database, merchandising, NDC interfaces etc. outside of PSS as legacy systems are not effective enough to be used for sharpening their retailing strategy. Effectively it means that in the near future PSS may only used for routine operation such us PNR creation. In order to craft a rich omni-channel customer experience, airlines requires platforms that provides extensive business model control (rules based) plus strong product and channel management capabilities. These platforms must have a modular open architecture that fosters a partner eco-system for collaborations. Structured and well defined APIs form a key requirement for collaboration and innovations.    

A PSS specialist agrees and refers to the way availability is handled now. But the same adds, “Offload as much data as possible.  But keep the mainframe for its phenomenal message processing capability. Use the data which is there on the mainframe, but do that analysis offline.”

An e-commerce specialist, too, says currently there is a problem of data integration from different systems based on completely different philosophy and aggregation methods. “I would find legacy PSS systems as a major obstacle in getting quick and well aggregated customer view as it requires complicated interfacing which may impact data accuracy and reliability. I would rather focus on real time PSS data reliable interfacing to the external contemporary system where the proper data aggregation could be maintained. This would result in a mirror of PSS database outside of PSS, which could be used for generation of the accurate offer for individual passengers.”  

As for data about passengers coming from the indirect channel, airlines struggle with knowledge about the passenger from 3rd party channels, where they know almost nothing while it is usually lion’s share of the business. So in the future airlines need to get the most out of search and booking message flow that NDC will deliver.

From EDIFACT onto XML: As things stand today, the usage of NDC -XML by airlines and GDSs varies in its shape and form, resulting in a mix of EDIFACT and XML connectivity. It is not correct to suggest that an airline should be all NDC or all EDIFACT. ​EDIFACT will continue to exist for some time, even in carriers that adopt NDC enthusiastically. For example, it would be perfectly acceptable for an airline to offer NDC to partners but to retain current EDIFACT connectivity for interlining. At present interlining NDC-to-NDC business requirements and schemas is work in progress that complexity will take some additional time to address. NDC provides some short-term benefit from personalised shopping and ancillary distribution that EDIFACT can’t keep pace with, even if EDIFACT is needed for later parts of the process.

Way forward

Where the PSS specialists get annoyed is when they have to deal with people who have not even bothered to research the current capabilities of the PSS. “They have not even bothered to go on a Basic Reservations, Inventory, Ticketing and DCS courses. They just see a “legacy” mainframe and want to get rid of it,” summed an IT specialist.

The way forward is probably to start building the things needed on the outside of the old/ existing logics, then to “bridge it” in the back office (e.g. Revenue Accounting processes) to make sure the new functionality works in parallel with the old. Then, whenever nobody is using the old stuff, it can finally be removed.

Follow Ai on Twitter: @Ai_Connects_Us