Friday, May 23, 2014

The Airport Experience




Summer is fast approaching and along with the warm sunshine, the cold drinks, and barbeque also come vacation plans for many of us. While road trips are fun or so I have heard, I like flying to my destination. In my opinion, there is something special about driving up to an airport that doesn’t match the excitement of a road trip.

Come summer time, airports get busier than usual. The check-in line extends out as long as the one when the first In-N-Out Burger opened up here in Dallas. The security line is loaded with a fair bit of tension…take off my shoes? Not if you’re 12 and under. Take your jacket off? Not if you’re 65 and older. “Laptops need to be taken out please!” Somehow even the “please” doesn’t hide the fact that you have just been given an order!

I find it best to travel really light and with just a personal carry on. Life is so much easier for the 20 minutes that you have to spend going through check-in and security (DFW International airport has spoilt me! I realize that it is much longer at other airports.) The excitement, nervousness, and anxiety of getting past these gates is enough for me to head to the nearest bar to relax before getting on a flight.

Once past check-in and security, I enjoy walking around the airport to look at the stores and checking out the eateries. More than the obvious though, my favorite thing is to people-watch. I like to sit down in a spot from where I can watch the pedestrian traffic and look at all the different travelers. Have you ever caught yourself observing fellow passengers and wonder what their story is? Like why is a certain passenger walking the length of an airport in such high heels when clearly they were meant for a night out?! Or why is someone dressed to the nines, hat and all? Where are they planning to go straight from a flight? My favorite though are the moms traveling with their precious cargo. I am a mom of 2 amazing kiddos myself and have been lucky that they have been great travelers. I try to analyze those ‘calm’ moms who seem to have it together with kids less than 5 years of age (that’s my cut-off after which I believe kids travel better). I watch intently as to what they are doing right (read brilliantly) to have their children stay calm and composed and sometimes even enjoy being at the airport. Some airports are definitely kid friendly (like the Schiphol airport in Amsterdam) but a lot of them aren’t yet.

Another interesting observation is the variety of books I see people reading. Next to a library or a book store, watching people with their different reading material is a great place to add to your reading list!

Traveling can be a source of stress, especially the packing and unpacking but the airport experience definitely makes it worth the effort.

What are some of your fun airport experiences/observations? Do you have a favorite airport that makes your airport experience enjoyable?

Charmi Ramchandani

Account Manager

Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Are you satisfied with what most companies refer to as ‘Customer Satisfaction’?

Every company uses the catch phrase ‘Customer Satisfaction’.  After all, which company can hope to market their solution and get any traction in the marketplace without adhering to this buzz word as one of the core tenets of their offering. Though companies mean well and most of them actually strive to have client satisfaction as a goal, it is debatable as to how highly on their list they are willing to place this particular aspect of their service. Unless you live on Planet Utopia, the possibility of getting a bug free and totally business compliant solution is only a pipe dream.  However in the real world, Mr. Murphy does tend to be hyper active when and where you least expect him to and how the vendor responds to these unexpected and often unpleasant circumstances is what ultimately determines the failure or success of a project. As the saying goes, life is not about the challenges that you face but about how you face up to those challenges.

Client satisfaction taken in the literal robotic sense devoid of any human sentiment can be measured in hard cold statistics that provide a seemingly irrefutable scorecard on the number of issues that have failed or not working as they were supposed to. However a mere scorecard cannot really capture the intangibles,  as it does not reflect deadlines missed due to inaccurate or incomplete requirements, mission creep and other delays caused by acts of God.

Though customers obviously expect on-time and under budget deliverables, in the unfortunate instances when this is not possible, it is the attitude and approach of the vendor in dealing with these challenges that often times mould the reaction of the client. In the spirit of transparency, if the vendor discloses the challenges and outlines the potential pitfalls as the project progresses, that ensures that the client gains a valuable appreciation of the nuances of the project and at the same time helps calibrate their expectations. This is a much more preferred approach than working in a vacuum with minimal periodic or insightful updates creating a false feeling of comfort on the client’s side which gets disturbed rudely when details of an unexpected unsatisfactory outcome are disclosed at the last minute.

Those kinds of approaches will understandably result in strong backlash and is at the core of customer dissatisfaction.  Honest communication lines need to be open between the vendor and the client in order to achieve any semblance of customer satisfaction. Trust is an incredibly core tenet of the client vendor relationship and that is something that has to be earned from day 1 and is obviously not an attribute that can be taken for granted at the outset of any client vendor engagement.  I have personally seen cases where a relatively major adverse impact on a project was met with a reasonable response from the client as they realized that the outcome was in spite of the vendor putting in their best efforts due to a rapport developed between the vendor and the client. Conversely relatively minor issues have been blown out of proportion by clients owing to a toxic client vendor relationship.

The ultimate measure of customer satisfaction is typically gauged by how likely the vendor is willing to put his or her reputation on the line and recommending the solution to his or her peers.  That perception on the client side is shaped obviously by the merits of a solution and it’s execution but what a lot of vendors fail to realize is building trust and rapport through a human connection with the client is hugely important. Ultimately a great solution is not just one that has the most bells and whistles but also that which places a lot of importance on the intangibles involving inter-personal relationships.

We at RTS are proud to proclaim that our client services team has won multiple acclaims around the globe not just in terms of being subject matter experts in the revenue management domain but by nurturing relationships with clients through constant, courteous and consistent communication.  Rather than engaging in typical client-vendor relationships, we strongly believe that working with clients as partners goes a long way in smooth project management and enhanced customer satisfaction. We realize that you do not treat your passengers like mere statistics and we likewise view our clients as much more than just a number.

Please let us know what factors influence the satisfaction levels that you feel with your products. If you are thinking about a revenue management or pricing solution, we invite you to consider us and experience the award winning RTS customer service that a number of our existing clients can attest to.


Pradeep Bandla
VP, Passenger Solutions

Friday, April 11, 2014

RTS Press Release - Brittany Ferries selects RTS CargoProfitOpt

Revenue Technology Services (RTS) is pleased to announce that Brittany Ferries Freight division has selected RTS CargoProfitOpt as the solution to meet its freight revenue management requirements. Once implemented, this will be the ferry industry’s first such solution. With this win, RTS adds to its list of several firsts in its long history of 32 years; first passenger revenue management solution developed for Republic Airways, first cargo price optimization solution for Virgin Atlantic Cargo, and now the first revenue management solution for the freight ferry market for Brittany Ferries.

This also reiterates the thought leadership shown by both the companies to shake the status quo and make significant improvements to how freight is managed in the industry.

The freight revenue management solution will support capacity forecasting, show up rate forecasting, demand forecasting, bid pricing, and customer value components that will help Brittany Ferries to maximize their profits.

This win also strengthens the relationship and long standing partnership between the two companies over the years. Brittany Ferries already uses RTS ProfitOpt, our passenger revenue management solution.

Simon Wagstaff, Group Freight Director, commented At Brittany Ferries, we have long been convinced of the potential of a reliable system of revenue management for our freight business. RTS has always exhibited thought leadership in data analytics, revenue management, and pricing .The choice of RTS as our partner for this project was a very straightforward one, given the existing relationship between our two companies and the trust and confidence that has been built up since the introduction of their revenue management system on the passenger side of our business. We have complete confidence in their ability to deliver the system that we need and look forward to working closely with RTS in the long term.”

Raja Kasilingam, President and COO at RTS, "Revenue Technology Services is committed to making positive changes to the freight ferry automation world. We are delighted to add this product to the industry-leading suite of products we offer to the market place, all designed to help companies optimally market and sell their product, operate efficiently, and to better serve their customers.” Mukundh Parthasarathy, Vice President of Cargo solutions for Revenue Technology Services chimed in, “To have the world’s first freight revenue management solution developed for Brittany Ferries is a huge achievement for our cargo suite. Adding to this, we are the only company to have an integrated freight revenue management and passenger revenue management solution.”

The first phase of the project is scheduled to go live in the second quarter of 2014 that includes capacity management modules.

Alan Wayne, the project manager for this endeavour and also the manager of the passenger revenue management practice at Brittany Ferries commented, “The last couple of months have seen a successful start to the project. The nature of developing an integrated passenger and freight revenue management system has thrown up some interesting challenges that both Brittany Ferries and RTS are rising to. If we continue to progress in the same fashion we will have no problems hitting our Phase 1 go-live target. “


About RTS

Revenue Technology Services is a worldwide provider of profit enhancing revenue management and pricing software solutions for passenger and cargo, consulting services, and IT services for travel, transportation and logistics industries. RTS is headquartered in Dallas, Texas with offices in UK and South Africa and a development centre in IT Park in Chandigarh, India. For additional information, visit www.rtscorp.com or contact rts.information@rtscorp.com or +1-972-573-1600

About Brittany Ferries
Founded in 1972 by proud Breton Alexis Gourvennec and a group of fellow Breton farmers wanting to export their cauliflowers and artichokes to the UK, Brittany Ferries is now the leading maritime carrier on the western and central channel. Gourvennec formed the company, formerly known as Armement Bretagne-Angleterre-Irelande, or B.A.I. for short, which was officially born on a bleak New Year's Day in 1973 with French, British and Breton flags flying and a choir singing carols. With Britain's entry into the Common Market in 1973, Gourvennec saw his chance to end the geographical isolation of Brittany. Realising the quickest route to this new market would be across the western channel to Plymouth, he contacted several large shipping companies to no avail and began setting up his own company by purchasing a freighter, the Kerisnel, named after a small Breton village famous for its cauliflowers - with the Breton farmers who are still the company's main shareholders today.



Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Technolog-ease

I mentioned a few times previously where blog ideas seem to appear at random, depending on what is happening. Today was no different! Having covered the “People” and “Processes” part of our catchphrase, the only item remaining (before I start the loop again), is technology. I am, at heart, a geek. Granted, a weird geek, in that I like things like off road driving, fixing cars and mechanics, playing hard rock guitar, household repairs and various other “non-geek” pursuits.

But I have to tell you, I like technology. Not the type where I need an IT degree to be able to fix a car engine, but that type which makes our lives easier. The type which allows us to work around the world, cater for staff and clients in multiple time zones, and still maintain a reasonable work/life balance.

I live in the most beautiful city in the world, Cape Town. From a convenience perspective, it is NOT in the U.S.A., so we have to deal with businesses, shops and shopping centers who all tend to keep the same working hours. None of this 10 PM visit to the PC shops for parts. If I need to meet with someone, it needs to be during what would be my working day. So I need to borrow some time.

Additionally, our team is based around the world. Our India team’s day starts 3 ½ hours before mine. Our US team’s day starts pretty much as our sun goes down. When I am heading off to meet Mr. Sandman, they are heading towards afternoon tea time.

And in today’s connected world, people for the most part want answers NOW.

Technology can be a great enabler. Nipping out this morning to meet my insurance guy, an email comes through from a European client with a query. I can log this remotely, request a response from someone on our technical team in India, and they can investigate. The investigation is done remotely, and I get the feedback to the client, all within about 15 minutes. And this is done whilst I am stuck in traffic (one of the few Cape Town downsides), albeit with a spectacular view of the surfers.

This afternoon, after various calls, including conference calls with our full scattered team, I will head out slightly early to help coach my 3 sons at gymnastics. But this will be secure in the knowledge that if anything urgent arises, there is a pretty good chance that it can be resolved without me needing to leave the floor.

Later, after dinner and some time with the family, I can still sit down, vegetate a little in front of the TV, but at the same time I can review and respond to other requests, complete some admin, get appointments set up and generally continue being productive.

Similar technology allows clients to access hosted systems (both ours and others) remotely, offering the possibilities of similar flexibility. The abundance of online tools for meetings, video conferencing, screen sharing allows us to interact with clients without the added cost of travel, and provides much quicker resolution.

For those of us who grew up with token ring networking, Unix, DOS networking, green screens, and dumb terminals all requiring some form of hard connections or locations, technology truly can be miraculous. The biggest challenge I personally face is knowing when to switch off!

So any unhealthy work/life balance is not the fault of technology, but purely down to my human failings J

Let us know how you use, or would like to use, technology to enrich your lives.

Jason Codd
Vice President - Services

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Recruiting the next "Super Star"

As I was reading Thomas L.Friedman’s NY Times article, ‘ How to get a job at Google’ (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/opinion/sunday/friedman-how-to-get-a-job-at-google.html?_r=0), a fantastic read by the way, I had a simple question to my colleagues in the travel and transportation community – when you look to expand your team, do you hire or do you recruit?

This is not a trick question...so I started googling as I thought there was a difference between these terms and couldn’t get my mind or words around what exactly was the difference but deep inside knew that this particular difference can take a company to the next level or make it another mediocre run-of-the-mill organization.

Merriam Webster defines ‘Hire’ as

hire

noun \ˈhī(-ə)r\
 payment for labor or personal services :  wages

while ‘Recruit’ is defined as

re·cruit
verb \ri-ˈkrüt\
: to persuade (someone) to join you in some activity or to help you

Though these terms are used interchangeably, most companies make the mistake of hiring a candidate versus recruiting one. While hiring might typically be driven by need like a .Net developer, the act of recruiting shifts the focus on the individual who may or may not have the exact fit or skill sets. The way I see it is if you come across great talent, identify it, welcome them with open arms into your team and tweak / modify your organization accordingly.

These recruited individuals will make a difference. At RTS, we have strived to look for and recruit individuals that fit our culture and possess a winning attitude to make the organization improve by leaps and bounds.

I agree with Google as Mr.Friedman details in his article on the five hiring attributes that Google follows:
·         General cognitive ability
·         Leadership
·         Humility
·         Innate curiosity
·         Ownership

The least important attribute that Google looks for is ‘expertise’. I am not arguing that skill sets, grades, degree don’t matter but most jobs typically are not well defined from roles and responsibilities.

How does one go about recruiting? I kind of keep my eyes and ears open to every individual I talk to from various walks of life. They all can be potential recruits. If I meet someone who is very logical, analytical and curious, a light bulb in my mind comes on as to how can I bring this person into RTS? 

We at RTS have a blue print of who would be a great candidate to work in our environment irrespective of the vertical, or skill set that we are trying to fill in. As long as that person meets those standards, they are in.

This process can be slow but trust me this can work wonders as I have seen major corporations time and again hire individuals either to manage or to meet a job description losing sight of the bigger picture.

Once recruited, the relationship between the organization and the individual should be treated like another relationship. It cannot be taken for granted. The candidate / relationship have to be nurtured with appropriate attention paid to their aspirations, talent and capabilities. As you may well know, our business is still about people. No single individual is indispensable but time and again we have seen that when key people move on, customers do take notice and keep their options open during decision points.

This approach  has made a difference in our organization. We would love to hear your thoughts on this topic.


Mukundh Parthasarathy
VP, Cargo Product Management and Marketing

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Project Blog: Lessons Learned

As I come to the end of one project and have another significant one ramping up, it is always good practice to review the lessons learned and check what could be applied to the upcoming project.

The ‘lessons learned’ title seems to suggest that it is about things that might have gone wrong and need preventing in the future.  But this is only half of the picture as it should also include positive aspects of a project that worked well, and make sure these are repeated.

It may seem some of these things will be obvious, but I find it very useful to remind myself of good practice, making sure these are put into practice and become a habit.  A simple example would be the best practice of the weekly project meeting and providing a structured agenda to facilitate a productive meeting and avoid wasting project member’s valuable time. This should be followed by minutes and well defined action items with agreed dates. Sounds like the basics, but I bet we’ve all been in formal meetings were it does not happen.

With a new project on the horizon, review the lessons learned log from these past previous projects or discuss with the project team for pitfalls, concerns, or positive experiences. Or just simply review the known best practices, which is of course applicable to all areas of business and not unique to Project Management.

Mistakes are inevitable in any project, it’s not the end of the world, and it’s not about assigning blame, rather having open and honest discussion and communication. The important thing is to learn from any mistakes, identify solutions and promote the positive aspects of any lessons learned to make sure mistakes aren’t repeated, but equally ensure the good things are used again.

Typically lessons are captured in the review at the end of the project and have mid- or longer term gain on future projects. In reality it should be seen as a continuous process as ‘lessons’ can happen at any time in the project and it is worth considering getting the team together, individually or collectively, and asking what could we be doing better right now or what is working particularly well?

  • ·         Review learned lessons from past project at start of new project to see what can be applied.
  • ·         Discuss items/concerns with a new customer for their typical issues/concerns or best practice.  
  • ·         Setting up a project lessons learnt log at the start of the project. Make sure everything is captured and not forgotten. Act immediately where appropriate.
  • ·         Checkpoint once a month in the weekly meetings. This can help identify and correct any concerns/issues on an active project and reap benefits immediately.
  • ·         Review at new project phases when new team members may be introduced.


So why not use the knowledge gathered and experience gained in past projects, from whatever your previous or current role or perspective, and prevent the same mistakes being made from previous projects, or apply the best practices.

Lessons learned should:

  • ·         Focus on quality not quantity. Typically the top 10 should suffice (for both positive and negative).
  • ·         Be specific and realistic.
  • ·         Have agreed recommendations.
  • ·         Do NOT criticise individuals (or be used for settling scores!).

I read blogs or other articles similar to this and often think ‘yeah, I know that!’ and they serve as good reminders for commonsense tasks or practice,  but do I always put these things into practice and make them a habit?  Sometimes it seems there are too many current tasks that need attention and the focus is on getting those completed. But spending a little time now to reflect and adjust may reap significant rewards immediately or later in the next project.

So, my next task is to review the lessons learned and best practice from similar past projects as I start the initial project planning on the next one...

Patrick Allen

Senior Consultant and Project Manager

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

The Case for Use Cases

In any software business or industry, a Business Analyst should be able to write flawless use cases so that the resulting document is crystal clear to a layman, in this case, a software developer who has a little or maybe no domain knowledge.

At RTS, we are lucky to have a development team offshore who is knowledgeable of not just the software platform that our product is created on but also the domain knowledge.  This setting makes it easier to transfer the use cases to the team and receive back a resulting product with close to 100% accuracy without too many iterations.  In the case where there is lesser domain knowledge, it would have been as good as writing the ‘Hello World’ program within a couple of minutes but not knowing what ‘Hello’ and ‘World’ means! That being said, it is also impossible for one person to gain both the technical and functional knowledge of a business requirement and hence the necessity for both the teams to work closely with each other and having a good method of understanding each other’s language that is on the use case document. At RTS, we proudly boast  that the turnaround time for an enhancement or a new feature is short because of this set-up.

My approach to writing a use case is that I use the bottom up approach, since knowing the end result of what is required helps drive the details. Once the end result is known, then working backwards in order to get all the parameters, rules, pre and post conditions, flow and exceptions are just adding details to achieve the end result.  Another effective approach is to involve the business owner/s so as to make sure that it is on the right track. Agile methodology works here, but from the second draft onwards, because the first draft needs to be done in its entirety to give the business owner a full overview of where it is headed before submitting it to the development team.

One last important factor that helps me create a use case is to put myself in the shoes of a layman  so as to get a feel of how easy/difficult it is to understand the intent of the use case on hand. If it is easy enough that the terms, language, diagrams are all flowing, then it is a success and if it is not easily understood, then  maybe tweak it to achieve that.


How do you create your use cases and deliver them to your teams? What are the 2 best approaches that you have come across? 

Deeshi Gandhi
Technical Manager