Advanced Inventory Management Leverages Open Systems Technology to Provide Fast, Flexible Solution for Addressing Challenges of Customer Segmentation and Inventory Processing for All Distribution Channels
SOUTHLAKE, Texas, Mar 30, 2004 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — Sabre Airline Solutions
announced today the implementation of newly launched SabreSonic Inventory, an
advanced inventory management solution that leverages open systems technology.
The system assures revenue integrity through real-time application of
inventory controls, while addressing the dramatic growth of flight
availability requests. The ability to evaluate reservation requests in real
time and maximize total revenue of the entire flight network through
SabreSonic Inventory is considered a breakthrough in revenue management.
Airlines are looking for ways to address the increasing demands on their
current technology due to the changing customer behavior toward shopping and
the growth in online activity. Customers are becoming increasingly demanding
on both itinerary and price and have learned to dictate conditions when
shopping for travel online. The conditions customers are seeking include the
best alternatives in terms of routing, time and date of travel, and price.
This customer evolution has led to the requirement for as many as 100+ flight
itinerary options before purchasing travel. As a result, flight availability
requests continue to grow at higher multiples relative to bookings.
“Airlines are faced with increasingly bargain-minded online shoppers,
which is driving down yields and increasing processing costs,” said Gianni
Marostica, president of Airline Passenger Solutions for Sabre Airline
Solutions. “We developed SabreSonic Inventory to address the challenges
airlines face from the impact of these trends.”
SabreSonic Inventory provides unprecedented flexibility and point-of-sale
based inventory controls that can increase airlines’ overall revenue and
yields. In addition, SabreSonic Inventory utilizes a new approach to
availability processing that reduces costs by as much as 75 percent and
maintains revenue integrity through real-time application of inventory
controls. The new open systems architecture provides up to 70 percent savings
in inventory system maintenance and development costs.
One of the breakthrough developments of SabreSonic Inventory is the
ability to provide real-time availability. An economic-based algorithm
determines seat availability on the airline’s flights and dates as part of a
response to either an availability or a booking request. SabreSonic Inventory
maintains a current view of the airline’s inventory by processing all seat
sell and cancel activity to update its flight/date booking counts. “Airlines
can quickly implement or test new inventory management methodologies, making
it easier to modify and enhance inventory functions in order to meet both
market and airline profitability needs,” explained Marostica.
“Better customer segmentation and increased flexibility via the SabreSonic
Inventory open systems platform are the characteristics that airlines need to
respond to the ever increasing customer demands for travel. SabreSonic
Inventory provides this performance and flexibility for carriers of all
sizes,” said Gianni Marostica. “We are the constant innovators in the field
of yield and revenue management, and SabreSonic Inventory carries on that
tradition by providing a platform for carriers to migrate to a customer-
centric, CRM-based revenue management methodology.”
SabreSonic Inventory is a key part of the recent release of the SabreSonic
new generation line-up of open-systems passenger management solutions. The
open-systems underpinning of the SabreSonic suite provides airlines with the
flexibility to acquire improved passenger management functionality on a
completely integrated or modular basis to match their evolving needs.
SabreSonic Inventory is one of the many components of the SabreSonic suite
that is available to all airlines, including carriers that are not hosted on
Sabre Airline Solutions today.
Air France and Cathay Pacific Airways have implemented Sabre Airline
Solutions’ SabreSonic Inventory as a way to maximize revenues, lower IT costs,
gain more flexibility and speed to market, and lay the groundwork for cost-
effective future inventory product development efforts. Air France began
using an earlier version of the system in 1996 and witnessed immediate results
quickly.
According to Air France, the airline chose SabreSonic Inventory to help
increase its revenues and reduce costs. “In our search for an O&D-oriented
real-time inventory control solution, we found SabreSonic Inventory to be the
most cost-effective solution for Air France,” said Air France AP specialist
Pierre Gandois. “Our goal to increase Air France’s revenue using this tool
has been achieved as expected.”
Additionally, Air France cited the benefits of the open systems platform
that underpins the SabreSonic Inventory solution. “We see two key benefits to
using open systems technology,” Gandois continued. “First, it provides
various and efficient solutions to have an inventory control system interfaced
with other systems of different natures, both open-systems based and not.
Also, SabreSonic Inventory offers a large variety of standard tools and
processes that are having a good cost/benefit ratio in terms of development
and implementation.”
Gandois reported that in 2003, the average number of monthly queries to
the SabreSonic Inventory system processed for Air France represented more than
60 million availability requests and 30 million booking requests.
SabreSonic Inventory Benefits
SabreSonic Inventory leverages the benefits of its open systems
architecture to provide 24×7, real-time transaction processing. The system
operates on a Unix platform and connects directly to the computer reservations
system (CRS). Outdated leg and segment inventory processing within the CRS is
bypassed and replaced with full origin-destination control. Benefits of
SabreSonic Inventory include:
-- Quick and effective implementation of inventory control features that
fit the airline's business processes, providing the information
required to react quickly to changes in market conditions while
minimizing time to market and risk.
-- Improved economic evaluation through the application of diverse fare
qualification rules, point-of-sale criteria as well as interline
proration rules. An airline can apply automated discount fare rules
by point of sale to a given website, travel agent, tour operator,
corporation, etc. SabreSonic Inventory utilizes these point of sale
rules entered by the airline to adjust availability as part of the
search.
-- Increased revenues provided through a real-time functionally rich
inventory control environment capable of returning market
availability based on the anticipated value that a passenger
represents to the airline.
-- Flexible system that supports O&D based availability in a Continuous
Nesting framework and other traditional inventory control
methodologies (serial, mixed and virtual nesting).
-- Open system architecture producing lower IT costs, improved
flexibility for the inventory function, and a foundation for cost-
effective future product development efforts.
-- Improved individual carrier and alliance based inventory performance
with the ability for even the largest alliances to store their shared
inventory in memory, which results in reduced CPU processing load and
disk storage.
-- Improved revenue through code share agreements by rerouting
availability requests to the operating carrier for code share
partners, referencing true O & D availability for each flight
segment.
-- An inventory control platform that permits the airline to adopt a
customer-centric CRM-based revenue management strategy.
SabreSonic Inventory combined with Sabre AirMax offers the complete
solution for O&D revenue management. The combined online inventory control
capability and off-line decision support functionality provides the complete
solution to optimize an airline’s network wide inventory controls. The
combined offering also allows carriers to compete more effectively on routes
with low cost carrier competition given the recent addition of restriction
free pricing capability.
Why Open System Design?
Many airlines are plagued with proprietary systems which are costly to
maintain and inflexible to change. In addition, the volume and complexity of
transactions are driving an increase in data processing costs. Airlines are
interfacing around the clock with customers worldwide, thus leaving no room
for downtime and scheduled maintenance — an unfortunate requirement of many
proprietary systems.
Next generation, open-systems architecture allows airlines to lower IT
costs and gain more flexibility to be able to react to changes in market
conditions. It is an interruption-free system that is easily adaptable to
unpredictable transaction volumes as well as rapid volume growth. Open-ended
platforms provide faster time to market and easy integration of best-of-breed
solutions and technology. SabreSonic Inventory represents a new generation in
inventory control capabilities and revenue management, made possible by the
flexible open system architecture.
“SabreSonic Inventory has generated tremendous interest from the airlines
since it offers a real-time capability to provide true origin-destination
revenue management,” said Marostica. “We believe the implementation of
SabreSonic Inventory will change the way airline revenue management is
performed. Sabre Airline Solution’s revenue management systems have provided
an incredible competitive advantage to our customers, and we believe that this
new solution will further improve that advantage.”
“Our pricing and shopping solution is another shining example of
significant change in the technology environment for the airline industry.
Sabre Airline Solutions is the first to move to a totally open platform for
the most complex function — shopping and pricing, of a passenger solution
suite. We are also working on migrating our ticketing fulfillment function to
an open systems architecture as well. For our airline customers, this open-
system design represents scalability, reliability and — most important —
flexibility. Increased cost savings on the new IT infrastructure and improved
speed to market will generate significant benefits for our airline customers,”
Marostica added.
About Sabre Airline Solutions
Sabre Airline Solutions, a Sabre Holdings company, is the world’s largest
provider of software products, reservations and departure control systems and
other passenger management systems, and consulting services that help airlines
simplify operations and lower costs. Sabre Airline Solutions’ proven
leadership is demonstrated by the growing number of airlines that leverage the
technology and services: More than 200 airlines worldwide use Sabre Airline
Solutions’ broad portfolio of smart solutions for decision-support tools to
increase revenues and improve operations. More than 100 airlines worldwide
rely on Sabre Airline Solutions for passenger management solutions, with 15
new carriers added and nine carrier renewals for SabreSonic Res advanced
reservations in 2003. In addition, more than 100 clients worldwide have
turned to Sabre Airline Solutions consulting group for strategic, commercial
and operational consulting. More than 500 contracts worldwide were signed in
2003 within Sabre Airline Solutions.
Sabre Holdings Corporation (NYSE: TSG) is a world leader in travel
commerce, retailing travel products and providing distribution and technology
solutions for the travel industry. More information about Sabre Holdings is
available at http://www.sabre-holdings.com .
Sabre Airline Solutions, the Sabre Airline Solutions logo, SabreSonic, and
Sabre AirMax are trademarks and/or service marks of an affiliate of Sabre
Holdings Corporation. All other trademarks, service marks, and trade names
are the property of their respective owners.
SOURCE Sabre Airline Solutions
Kathryn Hayden of Sabre Airline Solutions, +1-682-605-2252, or Kathryn.hayden@sabre-holdings.com
http://www.sabre-holdings.com