The Challenge
Driving Digital Transformation of the Finance Function for Better Performance
Seven-star airlines prompt high customer expectations. They need to offer a seamless experience that starts long before the plane taxis down the runway.
One of the best carriers in the business, with significant passenger and cargo operations, this global Middle East-based airline delighted its customers in the air. But its financial admin processes on the ground fell short.
Their existing system created a high volume of exceptions for manual clearance making it difficult to meet stringent SLAs. Manual processing in-turn led to a high rate of errors and omissions. And because the system processed data in batches, it held everything up when one transaction was flagged.
The system also failed to fully automate varied interline partnerships, creating delays for settlements. Perhaps most troubling, its handling of airline tax processing struggled to meet varying requirements across different geographies, sparking potential risk.
Our client needed to accelerate passenger sales data delivery to better manage price, capacity, and route planning while minimizing manual efforts. They also required comprehensive auditing to optimize tax compliance, mitigate revenue leakage, and tighten up fare management.
Continued automation was key to solving this problem, but they also had to modernize their existing systems.
The Outcome
Establishing Intelligent Automation for Business Process Excellence
Our first priority was automation. Leveraging our advanced products and platforms, we optimized critical business operations for our client by implementing Sutherland altra® PRA. This automated the processing of sales data while accelerating data flow so 99% of all daily transactions were reported within 48 hours. Passenger revenue accounting costs were reduced by 32% in the first year alone, with 85% of fare audit becoming touchless. In turn, the real-time availability of sales and revenue data enabled agile pricing decisions for commercial teams while reducing accounting costs across the network.
With the goal of driving growth, efficiency, and productivity across our client’s business, our next focus was to transform the cash application process at scale. We fully automated the reconciliation of accounts receivable for credit card processing to further lower operating costs. As a result, the airline could reduce staffing costs considerably.
A comprehensive transaction auditing system was then implemented to quickly address revenue leakage, helping identify double the number of fare price violations. Further automation accelerated revenue declaration and extended across the airline’s various interline settlements, reducing delayed processes and boosting interline sales by 3x more than the previous year. The real-time availability of sales and revenue data meant this airline could manage pricing decisions better and boost sales. Plus, stringent auditing ensured consistent global tax compliance.
To ensure ongoing, pain-free compliance with statutory requirements around the world, we designed a bespoke tax engine that capitalized on our extensive automation expertise. This introduced standardized, accurate reporting by collecting data from disparate systems to determine the correct tax payable.
Finally, to drive further operational efficiencies, we helped provide new keys to ongoing business success by aiding the development of the client’s own cargo platform. That’s digital performance unlocked and measurable results delivered!
Discover How Sutherland BPaaS can Reinvent your Business Processes for Greater Operational Outcomes
Reduction in operating costs
Uptime with increased speed, accuracy, and scalability
Revenue leakage recovered each year
Services
Automation, Business Operations, Business Process as a Service, AltraPRA
Industry
Travel, Transportation, Hospitality & Logistics
