Rassure

Not Detected. Not Seen. Lost Profit.

Audit COVID-19 Exchange & Refunds Automatically

Buried under tens of thousands of airline ticket refund applications? Pleased to announce that Rassure has implemented ATPCO Emergency Flexibility for Changes to Fare Rule Conditions on Existing Tickets. RAXTM is now able to automatically audit airline refunds and validate them against either the original fare rules or if qualifying, against exceptions coded using ATPCO’s Emergency Flexibility. This service enables an airline to utilize the ATPCO facility to code the automatic processing of COVID-19 exceptions to standard exchange and refund rules, enabling agents to handle Exchange and Refunds automatically via GDS rather than submitting a refund application to the airline. Benefits for airlines using this ATPCO facility combined with Rassure’s refund validation service are:

  • Save time and money: Practical alternative to manual processing via Refund Application Processing. Automatic refunds via GDS + automatic audit review by RASSURE RAXTM vs costly manual processing and review of each refund application.
  • Immediate Processing: Preconfigured ATPCO Emergency Flexibility for Voluntary Changes and Refunds Rules (COVID19 Rules) on RASSURE RAXTM
  • Increased Refund Audit Frequency: Covers the airline’s exposure to ARC & BSP refunds through frequent Refund Audits, i.e. Daily, Weekly, Fortnightly, Monthly. 
  • 100% validation: Rassure’s audits are based on reviewing 100% of tickets, clients can be confident that every refund, no matter how many, will be audited. 
  • Error Free Service: RAXTM implements and checks through all data supplied by Airline at time of processing.

Why Your Airline is losing millions of dollars annually due to revenue leakage? (And How to Fix It)

Revenue leakage doesn’t only affect the airline’s profits. It affects overall economic health and results in accumulated drainage of principal investment over time. 

The discussions in the recent past witness that the revenue management systems do not adhere to serious ticketing violations, ultimately resulting in ADM. The current best practice to resolve such violations is outsourced, semi-manual audits with varying levels of systems support. For a $2B airline, this  lost profitability is estimated to be $20M to $60M per annum.

Current audit business models based on percentage of recoveries are not suitable for examining revenue leakage within direct sales channels. Airlines need a transaction based approach that is capable of reviewing every sales channel, including direct channel transaction. Overall, this mismatch between expected revenue and the actual amount received originates in stages such as:

  1. Reservation stage (un-ticketed booking, space churning, seat blocking, duplicate booking)
  2. Payment and ticketing stage (booking classes violations, fare rule violations)
  3. Funds settlement (ADM costs, unnecessary distribution costs)
  4. Post booking stage (last-minute cancellations, refundable no-shows, tariff abuse)

The existing procedure proves to be inefficient while dealing with problematic travel agent behaviour and achieving a leak-proof revenue stream. Currently, the industry is working on corrective measures such as; PNR reconciliation programmes, integration of stand-alone revenue audit models, employing more strict rules, and simplifying the ADM to avoid revenue leakage and prevent fraud. In an environment where airline profitability is averaging

Recent evolution and application of disruptive technologies are capable of overhauling the airline revenue landscape altogether. Detect, reveal, and stop leakage has been tested and proven to be error-free. AI-based systems with increased refund audit frequency and 100% validation can help airlines reclaim their lost efficiency. An objective of maximum revenue recovery while processing millions of transactions can eventually lead to error-free, data-driven audits in a broad-spectrum ticketing lifecycle.

The availability of tools and technology is a paramount aspect of recovering millions of dollars annually due to revenue leakage. However, technology alone is not capable enough to revive the normative culture within the airlines. It requires decisive leaders to cultivate an enabling environment, building trustable and transparent systems, and ensure accountability for full optimisation and business growth.

Is your airline ready to lead the technological revolution and reclaim the lost power?

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How Technology Is Changing: How We Recover Lost Airline Revenue?

Today’s business world is all about relentless change. The massive influx of technology has forced companies to evolve at the quickest pace ever to stay competitive. Air transport, being a technology-centric industry, is more exposed to risks associated with change. Robots, AI-based machine learning, VR and immersive experience, inflight connectivity, the role of biometrics, and autonomous travel are some of the evolving technological trends in years to come. 

Experts suggest that the adoption of new technologies to reap the benefits to their true potential in value creation is an additional challenge than just the implementation of a tech-solution. Airlines have been focussing on revenue assurance, costing millions of US Dollar every year. However, as we have highlighted in a previous blog, what an airline has been recovering historically is an underestimate of the real level of revenue leakage. Fraudulent ticketing activity, mismatched fare basis codes, invalid fare amounts, or errors associated with taxes, fees, surcharges, and advanced purchase or abuse of waivers are some serious concerns hurting the full revenue assurance programs. There are also incidences of distribution channels adding to the complexity of abuse either deliberately or inadvertently. To date, the main approach to sales audit has been sampling analysis by expert human auditors, augmented in some cases by automated reference to GDS. This legacy approach still leaves millions in unrecovered leakage from narrowed scope (direct sales are almost always excluded) and fuzzy bunching.

Rassure has proudly introduced RAX™, which sets a new quality, cost, and sustainability standard in the detection of revenue violations caused by wilful abuse, genuine errors, and poor design and understanding of airline rules in airline tickets. RAX™ accuracy is so high, it has even discovered GDS errors and filing errors. This fully-featured and intelligent solution is used to:

  1. Audit every ticket individually, subjecting each to hundreds of tests
  2. Process millions of transactions per hour through a high powered analytical engine, allowing audits to take place soon after transaction date
  3. Manage ADM recovery with our automated ADM and dispute management platform
  4. Deep dive and uncover the sources of leakage by market, point of sale, and channel
  5. Deliver flexible and comprehensive management reporting weekly, monthly or quarterly to drive behaviour change

RAX™ is our proprietary intelligent expert system capable of delivering a radical boost in benefits such as;

  1. 100% of tickets checked against all rules – not just a sample
  2. 100% of markets covered – not just a few
  3. All channels (internet, call centre, agency, OTAs) covered – not just external agencies
  4. Rapid detection within 24-48 hours of each checking cycle – not 20 to 60 days
  5. Up to 1000% more violations detected – not just 20% to 30% more

Our airline industry-focused approach depends on a proprietary analytics engine and proprietary expert knowledge algorithms. This radical approach of bringing the insights to your dashboard, which otherwise will go hidden, is aimed at a maximum recovery of lost profits. Rassure is confident of optimal revenue assurance for your business by minimizing sales violations with the aim to detect, reveal, and recover.

Come talk to us and we will be happy to share how we can do it together.

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Airline Revenue: What No One Is Talking About

“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” asked George Berkeley 1710, American philosopher.

Like the tree falling in the forest, no one hears the sound of the real revenue leakage. Revenue leakage is like an iceberg with most of the leakage below the waterline and invisible. It is turning out that traditional sales audit is identifying only a fraction of the actual revenue leakage that is taking place. This is made worse by airlines on one hand aiming at new opportunities to grow revenue, profit, and productivity. While on the other hand, they strive to differentiate their brands in the marketplace of rapidly growing LCCs. This increasing complexity has defeated many attempts at full revenue assurance. 

Traditionally, Audit has been largely manual and with some degree of automation. Rassure, being a proactive data-based audit solution for airlines has identified revenue leakage estimated at 1% – 3% of total sales volume for most passenger airlines. Even direct sales via airline websites can leak revenue through call centres! The under-collection could be  enough to turn the airline from profit-making to a loss situation in any one year. The leaks are due to a range of factors such as fraudulent ticketing activity, mismatched fare basis codes, invalid fare amounts, or errors associated with taxes, fees, surcharges, and advanced purchase or abuse of waivers. The role of Agents needs a microscopic analysis considering they are a crucial stakeholder in ticketing, revenue collection, and customer facilitation.

Our innovative, AI-based abilities tactically enable us in the detection of revenue leakage, damage assessment through implementation of smart analytics solutions. It allows an airline to take advantage of the digitisation, improve the ROI, and contribute to capacity building initiatives avoiding consuming precious time and resources in tedious Agent Debit Memos  (ADM).

Rassure is your trusted and resourceful partner to detect, reveal, and stop all types of ticket rules violations. Our comprehensive, automated, technology-driven system based on process approach identified up to ten times more revenue recovery benefits than traditional sales audit, despite doing a second pass audit. Rassure can coexist with Airline initiatives to prevent revenue leakage across the life cycle of the ticket.

Airline industrial revolution requires an advanced level, thought leadership to support the “stop leakage” initiative of Rassure. The revenue-management system for inventory approach, fancy promotions, and experience improvement methodology are not enough in a long-term profitability strategy. Our efforts today will play a key role in the evolution of air travel in the next few decades.

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How can we help your airline protect your revenue during Covid-19?

With COVID-19, airline industries are anticipating a revenue loss of $252B. Tens of thousands of airline ticket refund applications, the country-wise imposition of constantly changing measures, and airline regulatory compliance are some prominent issues that need to tackle this challenge smartly.

Current circumstances also present an unprecedented opportunity to break the patterns of “farming model” and strengthen the revenue leakage recovery by utilising the disruptive technology that has already proven its worth. Our system has already identified millions in annual revenue leakage and lost profits.

Rassure is IATA strategic partner and ATPCO Platform Partner since 2016. Being a proactive data-based audit solution for airlines, we follow an innovative path during these testing times. In the last few years, our technology experts have heavily advocated that revenue leakage today is highly unseen. It is equivalent to an undirected waiver policy. “Not detected” and “not seen” leads to lost profits that range from $20M to $60M for a $2B airline.

Rassure helps airlines to reclaim the lost efficiency by its state of the art technology.

RAX ™, our automatic solution with established credibility of detecting the revenue violations, provides an opportunity of maximum revenue recovery by processing millions of transactions every hour. Rassure, being confident in the expertise and the resources invested in the development of its latest technology, also seeks its utilisation during this dismal time.

We at Rassure offer following strategic interventions to help your airline recover and take control of your revenue during the pandemic;

  1. Audit COVID-19 Exchange & Refunds Automatically
  2. Audit frequency at your choice: Daily, Weekly, Fortnightly, Monthly
  3. Inclusion of ”performance dashboard” in the business process improvement plan
  4. Revenue leakage/violation detection system using smart analytics (RAX ™)

We help you thrive on improved earning per share, increased efficiency, least costs on ADM, and aim at building a sustainable business model in the times of crisis. Rassure enables you to avoid a sizeable profit impact by saving costs and achieving financial efficiency within the least possible time.

The prevailing uncertainty has sparked a debate over the role of leaders across the world. Emerging from this unprecedented crisis requires a new level of confidence, courage, and forward-looking attitude. Taking control of your Airline revenue is a leadership choice that eventually results in improved decisions hence achieving the organisation’s purpose optimistically. Finally Every Dollar Saved is Every Dollar Earned.

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