Revenue Technology Services

The Scoop

Annual Interferry Conference, London 2019

Dag Lunde, Director of Business Development – Europe and Africa, attended the 44^th Annual Interferry Conference on October 5-9, 2019 at the InterContinental London – The O2.

As ever, the conference proved a valuable opportunity to connect and meet with existing customers, partners and potential new prospects and leads from the Ferry industry. There is definitely a reason that Interferry is considered one of the most important industry platforms for the Ferry Industry!

RTS Summit 2019

Lisbon, second oldest European capital city, was the location for the RTS 2019 Summit, themed “Make a Difference”. And what a difference it was.

Held at the Sheraton Lisboa Hotel and Spa, with a combination of internal and external speakers covering topics relevant to making a difference in the industry, department and solutions, there was something of interest to all of the attendees. Of course, the discussions are not the only purpose of the Summit, and the social events and networking breaks allowed ample opportunity to reconnect with clients, peers and prospects in a relaxed setting, exchanging thoughts and ideas.

The breath-taking views from the Panorama Bar at the Sheraton Lisboa Spa on the evening of Day 1 proved an icebreaker for most. Day 2 started out with a Portuguese dance troupe, and despite some minor AV challenges, added a real local flair to the proceedings. The day progressed with a focus on topics ranging from geopolitics and their impact on the industry through to trends in pricing, revenue management, scheduling, impact of big data in air cargo and finishing up with various product showcases.

The evening event at Sud Lisboa was enjoyed by all, and from the activity on the terrace overlooking the Tagus river, it appears that the venue was living up to its reputation of having scenery which is “the most Instagrammable in Lisbon”

Day 3 Continued with a mix of topics challenging the attendees to think about making a difference, product changes and group discussion topics, and after a late afternoon wrap up, Summit 2019 was brought to a close, with a wish to all attendees to have a “Boa Viagem”, a safe trip, until the next time!

2020 Happenings

Air Cargo India, Mumbai

The Air Cargo India conference offers industry stakeholders three days of knowledge sharing, informed opinions and business opportunities through a dedicated program drawn keeping the participants in mind. It will take place from 25 to 27 February 2020 at Grand Hyatt in Mumbai, India.

Revenue Technology Services (RTS) was present at the previous two Air Cargo India (ACI) conferences and this year again, RTS will show its presence. ACI is the premier cargo conference dedicated to the freight and cargo industry of the Indian subcontinent. For us, ACI has been a great platform to interact with the who’s who of the cargo world and connecting with them generates immense business opportunities. RTS will be represented by Mukundh Parthasarathy, Senior Vice President and Preetam Prabhu, Director of Business Development – Asia.

For more information on this conference or if you would like to schedule a meeting, please contact: Preetam.Prabhu@RTSCorp.Com

IATA World Cargo Symposium, Istanbul

RTS is thrilled to announce that we will be exhibiting and will be sponsoring an ‘invite only’ Executive Cargo Summit at the upcoming IATA World Cargo Symposium Conference in Istanbul, Turkey this March 10-12 and will take place at the lovely Hilton Istanbul Bomonti. We will be represented by Mukundh Parthasarathy, Senior Vice President, Mahesh Vemula, Senior Director of Cargo Solutions, David Hudspith, VP of Cargo Solutions Delivery & Support, Preetam Prabhu, Director of Business Development- Asia, Palak Gulati, Senior Business Analyst of Cargo, Elena Sanguino, Product Manager of Cargo, and Andi McCall, Marketing Manager. Don’t miss out on your chance to come and join us where you will have the opportunity to engage with over 1,000 senior experts and decision makers in the industry and hear world class presenters discuss the latest trends and issues effecting Air Cargo. Please stop by our booth # 32 to meet the team and learn more about our state of the art solutions we offer.

For more information on this conference, please visit: https://www.iata.org/en/events/wcs/

Aviation Festival Asia, Singapore

RTS will be exhibiting at the Aviation Festival Asia in Singapore. The event was initially scheduled for February, but due to the current travel restrictions as a result of the Coronavirus outbreak, this has been postponed to June 23-24, 2020. RTS will be represented by Jason Codd, Senior Vice President and Preetam Prabhu, Director of Business Development- Asia. Jason will also be a speaker at the event to talk about “Pricing, Revenue Management and the Low Cost Carrier,” exploring solutions in this fast evolving industry.

Should you wish to meet up with us at the event, please drop an email to: Preetam.Prabhu@RTSCorp.com

Shippax Ferry Conference, onboard Pearl Seaways

RTS will be attending the 18th annual on board Shippax Ferry Conference held from April 1-3, 2020 on board the Pearl Seaways, sailing between Copenhagen-Oslo-Copenhagen. The event will host over 450 delegates from 50+ ferry companies from all over the world with professional speakers and experts engaging in discussions and efficient networking and exhibitions.  This event is considered by many an annual family meeting for the ferry industry and an opportunity to bring together key stakeholders from the entire ferry cargo supply chain.

RTS will be represented by Jason Codd, Senior Vice President and Dag Lunde, Director of Business Development- Europe and Africa. Jason will be speaking on Revenue Management and Pricing in Cruise Ferry.

If you would like to arrange a meet up on board, please contact Dag at: Dag.Lunde@RTSCorp.com

Routes Europe, Bergen

Routes Europe provides organisations with an efficient platform to discuss new business opportunities with the region’s leading airlines, airports and tourism authorities. RTS will be attending with a focus on airline scheduling and revenue management, and to meet with clients and prospects in the area.

This year’s event will take place in Bergen, Norway from April 27 to 29. The city is located at the heart of Norway’s breath-taking fjord region, and is home to a variety of UNESCO World Heritage sites and opportunities for adventure.

RTS will be represented by Jason Codd, Senior Vice President and Dag Lunde, Director of Business Development- Europe and Africa.

If you would like to arrange a meet up on board, please contact Dag at: Dag.Lunde@RTSCorp.com

RTS Summit 2020

We are pleased to announce that we will be hosting our 2020 Summit in the beautiful Berlin, Germany.

We have orchestrated a venture observing your wishes in mind from exceptional keynotes by business professionals, networking time with essential discussions to an evening that exemplifies Berlin keeping you absorbed once you are captivated by its appeal and charisma.

RTS welcomes you to its annual Summit 2020 in the beautiful Berlin, Germany held at the Hilton Berlin that will commence on the evening of October 6^th for a wonderful welcome cocktail reception where guests can mingle, sip cocktails and enjoy the enchanting Berlin atmosphere.

Conference day sessions will take place on October 7^th and 8^th which will include podium presentations by external speakers and breakouts and interactive sessions on pricing, revenue management, scheduling, revenue planning and profit optimization.

In addition to gaining strategic to tactical insights in managing your customers and inventory by having group discussions with a panel of experts from the airline, cargo and cruise ferry worlds, and sharing of future vision and experiences by RTS leaders but also be taken aback by social events and dinners. You will find a great platform to network with your peers and the RTS team at the Welcome Reception as well as during the conference breaks, meals and social events.

Please continue to look out for additional information on the summit that will be provided throughout. Please feel free to contact Andi.McCall@RTSCorp.com for any queries.

Looking forward to a zestful summit with you all!

David and Elena join the RTS family

Client Chronicles

Ellinair Completes Final Phase 2 with New Nesting Methodology

We were thrilled when Ellinair joined the RTS family last year going live in June after a rapid implementation of less than four months. However, we haven’t stopped there, as shortly after go-live Ellinair introduced new branded fares which required working closely together to develop a hybrid nesting methodology, providing the required structure and controls to effectively revenue manage these fares. Although the delivery of the hybrid nesting concluded the final phase of the implementation project, our collaboration continues. With Ellinair using the Velocity Competitor Insight module, we are currently finalising requirements to fully automate business rules driven system recommendations based on competitor pricing and priority. In addition, we are currently amending the booking system extract to provide better post-departure data for use in the overbooking optimization model.

Georgia Panayiotidou, Revenue and Route Analysis Manager at Ellinair commented “It has been almost a year since we first started our cooperation with RTS and each day that has passed we just feel more and more happy with our choice, not only for their product but also for the great communication and vital assistance we have had from all the RTS team. They have been there for us, working with us, and for us, on all challenges and changes as if they were part of our airline. Their know-how on the field, their professionalism and their real interest to create added value to our airline was of substantial help to us and the new projects we initiated. With RTS we get the feeling of being understood and that together we can create things which will have a positive impact to our company and to our future cooperation as well.”

Ellinair was established in 2013 and started operations in February 2014. The company is a member of the Mouzenidis Group. Ellinair is headquartered in Thessaloniki, has two main operating hubs in Greece – Thessaloniki (SKG) and Heraklion (HER) – and offers an extended network connecting Greek cities with destinations in Eastern and Central Europe and a small domestic network within Greece. They operate a fleet of 6 aircraft which includes Airbus A319 and Airbus A320.

Product Happenings – Passenger Solutions

RTS Velocity 2019.1

The final 2019.1 release was completed in December 2019 and is currently being rolled out to the client community.  The major items included in this release are as follows:

Step Up/Step Down Pricing (by Mass Adjustment)

A significant enhancement to the ‘Step-up/Step-down’ (SUSD) functionality allows the Step Up/Down of the remaining demand, automatically creating a demand adjustment. This can be applied to the entire chain, or staircase, of subclasses right up the class nest, rather than just the adjacent class/subclass. This provides the ability to react quickly and change the pricing approach to a range of a sailings, or for a market.

Key Departure Monitor (KDM) Changes

Additional variables including Current Booked, Load Factor, Group Bookings and Remaining Demand have been added to this popular function making it even more flexible when creating critical lists and daily reports that can be automatically e-mail to distribution groups.

Departure Type/Route Groups

Provides additional layer to allow grouping, settings and reporting at a single line item level for all departures within the “Groups”, such as International or Domestic departure, or for much more granular type groupings. This also allows the user to directly load settings from a spreadsheet.

Worksheet Group Optimization

A worksheet Group Optimization function provides the option to evaluate an individual departure and recommend a break even proposed group size, or price, without displacing current demand or revenue. This is applicable to any nesting structure.

Workflow/Usability Enhancements

Whilst we believe the products are generally very efficient from a usability perspective, some lesser used components will be getting an overhaul in this release to simplify amendments, reducing keystrokes and entries needed.  This will include in-line editing, additions to the Case List Advanced Search option, and extra settings sort options.

Forecast Accuracy Report

This report will show the forecast error for a wide range of aggregations – from a departure/fare class up to a system-wide level.  The accuracy measure uses several different metrics: Mean Error (ME or Bias), Mean Absolute Error (MAE), root Mean Squared Error (rMSE), Mean Percentage Error (MPE) and Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE).

Our services team will be contacting the client’s project managers to schedule the maintenance release deployment.

RTS Velocity 2020.0

Work is currently under way on the first 2020 release which is planned for the end of Q2 this year, with key functionality expected to include the following features:

Improved Forecast Workbench

Forecasting is a critical element of the revenue management system, and are a vital component of the optimization process.  It is therefore extremely important that the process of configuring, creating and ongoing management of forecasts is made as user friendly as possible.

Campaign Manager

Campaign Manager is designed to improve forecasting accuracy, and will allow the user to define previous campaigns and apply the associated history to create demand adjustments to be applied for the duration of a future campaign. Similarly, historic campaign periods can be removed from the base forecasting process.  The principle can be applied to various events and market impacts on forecasting, and would not necessarily be limited to promotional campaigns.

Competitor Insight – Business Rules

The existing Competitor Insight tool will be enhanced to automate the optimization recommendations based on user applied business rules. This will provide options to automatically match, drop, or increase the current price level, or class, based on defined scenarios and priority decisions.  Where multiple competitors exist, rules can be set to determine which competitor is the highest priority becoming the base for the pricing decision. Controls should be provided to allow the analyst to determine how aggressive or conservative they wish to be, including how much additional space is allowed with the price move.

Smart Min Max Settings

The existing Min Max Settings will become rules based in the same way as the Adaptive Distribution Weights significantly increasing the flexibility of this optimization setting. Min Max settings can be dynamically applied to different classes/subclasses based on business rules or alerts relating to the behavior of the departure, rather than having to define specific class/subclasses.

Other Areas

We will also introduce improvements or changes to Round Trip optimization, worksheet shortcuts, Graphical Advanced Bookings drilldown capability, SSRS report running indicators, Captured Potential report additions, and Theoretical Capacity worksheet direct overrides.

Our services team will be contacting the client’s project managers to schedule the maintenance release deployment.

Product Happenings – Cargo Solutions

RTS AcceleRate 2019.0.0– Rating Rules Engine

RTS AcceleRate solution now includes a robust, flexible and dynamic rating business rules engine, which serves the following purposes:

• Provides ability for the authorized users to define a flexible hierarchy logic from the user interface for the rating decisions.
• Provides ability for the authorized users to define dynamic business rules to use with the rating engine for determining the applicable rate for a specific shipment. 

Users can define these rating business rules from a flexible user interface at all levels in real time.

The Rating Business Rules Engine enables AcceleRate solution to automatically offer the right price for a customer any time through a feasible and controllable/adjustable pricing hierarchy.

RTS Velocity 2020.0

Work is currently under way on the first 2020 release which is planned for the end of Q2 this year, with key functionality expected to include the following features:

Improved Forecast Workbench

Forecasting is a critical element of the revenue management system, and are a vital component of the optimization process.  It is therefore extremely important that the process of configuring, creating and ongoing management of forecasts is made as user friendly as possible.

Campaign Manager

Campaign Manager is designed to improve forecasting accuracy, and will allow the user to define previous campaigns and apply the associated history to create demand adjustments to be applied for the duration of a future campaign. Similarly, historic campaign periods can be removed from the base forecasting process.  The principle can be applied to various events and market impacts on forecasting, and would not necessarily be limited to promotional campaigns.

Competitor Insight – Business Rules

The existing Competitor Insight tool will be enhanced to automate the optimization recommendations based on user applied business rules. This will provide options to automatically match, drop, or increase the current price level, or class, based on defined scenarios and priority decisions.  Where multiple competitors exist, rules can be set to determine which competitor is the highest priority becoming the base for the pricing decision. Controls should be provided to allow the analyst to determine how aggressive or conservative they wish to be, including how much additional space is allowed with the price move.

Smart Min Max Settings

The existing Min Max Settings will become rules based in the same way as the Adaptive Distribution Weights significantly increasing the flexibility of this optimization setting. Min Max settings can be dynamically applied to different classes/subclasses based on business rules or alerts relating to the behavior of the departure, rather than having to define specific class/subclasses.

Other Areas

We will also introduce improvements or changes to Round Trip optimization, worksheet shortcuts, Graphical Advanced Bookings drilldown capability, SSRS report running indicators, Captured Potential report additions, and Theoretical Capacity worksheet direct overrides.

Our services team will be contacting the client’s project managers to schedule the maintenance release deployment.

Volunteer Spotlight

RTS continues its efforts in 2020 to help those in need by volunteering their time every month to an organization called Crossroads Community Services. There, we work together as a team, packing, sorting, stocking and assisting customers with collecting their items and helping them unload items to their vehicles. We really have been able to help make a difference in others’ lives and realize that there are many less fortunate that need our help.

To learn more about this wonderful organization, please visit: https://ccsdallas.org/

RTS India team invited orphaned children to come and celebrate Independence Day with them, a joy and wonderful way to give back to those less fortunate. Our volunteer opportunities have also allowed us to work better together as a team. Teamwork is crucially important here at RTS and we will continue to serve our community to help out others less fortunate.