Ticket to Ride

Suzie has been working as a flight attendant with a major airline for the past 8years. She enjoys every bit of her career. She has seen the world, travelling has allowed her to see continents and countries that she feels she may not have seen otherwise. Travel has been her passion since childhood and this was the best way for her to explore the world. Besides the travel involved in the job, most airlines allow their employees to travel for free or at greatly reduced rates. Although Suzie benefits a lot from Airline Staff travel discount, yet she faces a major drawback with this system.

Suzie is currently 31 years married and has a family in Yorkshire. She avails travel benefits tickets for herself as well as her family. If Suzie has to book these tickets she must contact the travel desk of the airlines, which is headquartered in Cologne, Germany. The travel desk needs to go through her records, check the availability of date and flight seats, there a procedure of hierarchy approvals that needs to be processed after which the travel desk confirms a ticket. On the flipside Suzie could lose out on a lot benefits, there were high changes of her losing out on confirmed staff seat. There are no listings or booking for staff members, this makes the staff travel unpredictable and chances of Suzie being bumped off a flight, since airlines give their revenue passengers priority over their staff. Many airline companies have strict rules, if the staff travel privileges are utilized, the staff must report for their duty immediately. This task of ticketing was getting uphill, not just for the staff but for the airline as well.

Airlines began to sort for a solution which could be consolidated, hence reducing the hassle in ticket booking for the staff. This is when the concept on Airline Staff travel Booking came in. The Pass Bureau of the airline handles all activities related to staff travel, be it Leisure or Duty travel they are responsible for the bookings. They involve a wide range of activities from booking of flights to accommodation, some   airlines occasionally book car rentals for employees who travel on business. 

Now if Suzie were to travel to Malaysia with her family for a “Truly Asian”, experience, her staff tickets would count under leisure travel. She is eligible to travel at her own will. The only problem she has been encountering here is the ticketing process she and her dependants have to go through, to track down tickets and get a reservation for seats at the time she desires to fly.

Besides leisure travel, airlines offer duty travel or business travel. Business travels are more critical since employees travel purely on Duty. These travels are business related the employees need to be given a smooth service. Apart from this, the staff travel department also becomes responsible for arrangements for visiting consultants to the airline, which may be grouped along with business travel and travel of temporary employees. Other activities that may be done by the staff travel department include jumpseat travel, vendor travel, travel agency travel, and deadhead travel. At times, the responsibilities related to staff travel for a partner airline may also be handled by the main airline's staff travel desk. Handling and managing all this was a risqué job.

The airline company, for which Suzie worked for, heard about a staff travel solution that could make the process of ticketing seem seamless and easy. A system through which staff could booking tickets more easily with 24/7 support from anywhere at any time. 

 The company wanted a module that would make quick ticketing process hassle free, user friendly and easy software that could be integrated on all modules at the same time it must be maintenance friendly. 

The staff travel mainly comprises of human resource team, payroll, revenue accounting, finance and IT.  The services are used by all staff members in the organization and retired staff. The staff team maintains a good relation with their staff; they take feedback, pain areas and try to address the same. The biggest concern of the staff was the ticket claims.

An airline staff travel system addresses to all the staff travel issues faced by the airline staff travel desk. The system was designed and integrated to allow all the staff to book tickets online at anytime from anywhere. The staff travel system has a booking engine to carry out live air bookings. The automatic ticketing system reduces the work load on the processing agents, eliminating errors while computing taxes and fares.

All Staff Travel Systems are designed and integrated to bring a smile a smile on the faces of staff like Suzie. When a staff member checks into the site to apply for a ticket, the process is quick and it save processing time. Agents can now relax as the responsibility of processing has been lowered from their shoulders. The tracking system works with accuracy hence helping the agents to track the requests of the requester en route.

Duty travel approval saves an employee time in approaching their supervisors. He can claim his expenses after returning from duty travel. The automated online transfer of Duty travel claims the amount to salary, thus saving manual input into financial system. 

Staff travel system has now picked up pace in the market, airlines sort to implement the system in the company. Staff travels management carters to a global delivery system, providing various flight benefits customized by the airline to tailor to their staff policies.

The system has modules that offer privilege and business travel benefits, these benefits are categorized for each staff according to grade. Based on the eligibility, the staff and immediate family members are entitled to various Travel booking Privileges or recreational benefits. The airlines takes into account, the hierarchy and position of the staff before the ticket discounts are determined.

As per the airline travel policies various duty travel claims and management benefits are offered to the staff.  Travel requests can be routed through approval hierarchy defined for the staff. The passengers can view their booking history and manage their bookings. The system enables the traveler to view his/her approval and travel status.

Airline booking systems also have modules to generate reports, manage bookings and profile management. Mr. Alexander, who works on the HR team for an African Airlines feel that this system has the best performance level. He quotes, “15 years ago, managing records was a hard task, everything was manual and there were many errors recorded in our system. After the implementation of staff travel system this task is simple, the system integrates with our HR modules. We have very few chances of errors now.”

The airline system has a unique login Id for every staff member. The member can view his profile and manage the same. He or she can check the status of their tickets as well. This helps not only the staff as well as the managing team to work smoothly.

The customers can book tickets anywhere at any time using credit card, debit cards maestro cards or pay at counter.  Now there are no more hassles at the Travel desk, just an easy Airline booking system.

“Before our company had adapted to airline booking system, there were a lot problems and confusions at the travel desks.” says Suzie.

Airhostess Samantha shares how easy Staff travel system has made their travel. She says,” My siblings now enjoy the pleasures of a first class travel; we get tickets based on Zonal Employee Discounts (ZED) and interlining. Travelling has never been more fun.”

Airline staff travel systems are now gaining momentum, more airline companies are using this system as it is organized reducing the rate of manual work.  Staff travel solution processes every booking segment in the respective GDS or reservation system of the airline operating the particular flight or leg. In this way, interline settlement between the user and other airlines easy reducing costs and effort considerably. 

Now Suzie has no worries booking a ticket, be it Leisure or Duty. Staff Travel System does it all. Like Suzie several airline staff members now find travel easy. With a click of the mouse or with the touch or your cell phones staff travel systems makes your leisure and duty travel enjoyable.

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Good Bye Orkut

The First time I had a email id and a social media account I was barely in high school. 10 years back children of my age were even not allowed to have an email account let alone a media account, as we had to be 18 years to have an account for socializing.
The first few networking sites that  launched were a trial and error attempt to encourage socializing online   Friendster, Friend-of - a-Friend, Hi5, these online friend networks were just basic in nature where one could meet friends, add friends and chat to some extent.

It was January 24th 2004 when Google had launched this media platform. Its popularity grew in leaps and bounds, indeed socializing online was a talk among young teens of my age at that time. Other online friend sites slowly began to fall out of grace. 

Google's Orkut stood out, developed by a Google employee Orkut Büyükkökten created a soaring success as a social networking site, In less than a month after it was launched, it became the talk of the town. Orkut could boast of having close to 1,00,000 members and seemed to have been discussed everywhere both online and offline.

I had a Hi5 account as well and it  worked on  simple concepts. After  joining the site, one describes his or her interests, particularities and you make a list of friends, invite them to join. When Orkut set foot, it was not just these basic details that we had to put up, we could invite our friends, navigate and look at their friends and make connections with people whom we did not know at the same time who shared our interests. In this way we became a part of our own network and thus created new ties .

That's basically it.  All a tad trite,  a great way of doing away with your time, although admittedly it must be fun to suddenly find an old friend in this way. Orkut was incredibly hip, and it was especially popular among the internet savvy.

Just in a few months Facebook was founded. At first Facebook took time to lay its foundation but once it stood firm, it topsy-turved everything for Orkut. Facebook became a skyscraper and Orkut stood like a hut no match to Facebook at all. 

Today Facebook  is the pioneer in social networking.It is the 2nd most visited website (Next to google) in the world and according to Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg, it has approx 1.28 billion active users. Now Orkut ranks in the 89th position of social media with more than half of its traffic from India and Brazil. Google managed to sustain this social media for a decade and finally they have decided to put the media to a full stop. Google has now decided to focus on YouTube, Blogger and Google+ which have taken off, with communities springing up in every corner of the world.

According to Economic Times: Orkut, Google's first social networking site, will cease to exist after September 30th, 2014, with the Internet giant deciding to shut down the service launched 10 years ago which is very popular in India and Brazil,  however, did not do so well in other parts of the world and lost sheen to rivals like Facebook. All Orkut users have also received an adieu mail stating that it will close down in September. 

Now that some of us including myself cannot recall how our Orkut profiles once looked, since we have completely lost touch. After ten years of sparking conversations and forging connections, It is time to say good bye to a social network that would have been a part of networking lives at some point.

 

Tête-à-tête with Ravi Kumar

S G Thampi: Increasingly the role of a Treasurer in an Organization is becoming more important and separated from the CFO's role. The role and the department is being spun off as a Revenue Centre. Going forward - what do you see?

Ravi Kumar: With increasing volatility in interest rates, different stands taken by Central Banks all over the world to protect their own interests and the overall exposure a company has in various financial assets (which contribute more than 50 % of their real assets) means that any edge the company can get by obtaining superior yields on these assets will contribute directly to their bottom line. These assets and liabilities can be surplus cash, borrowings or investments. So a Treasurer is here to stay and he has the very specific role of ensuring that Global events, volatility and other perceived and real risks are harnessed to the benefit of the Company.

S G Thampi: What are the products that a Corporate Treasurer uses to manage assets and liabilities?

Ravi Kumar: Show me your Cash flows and let us engineer a bespoke solution - seems to be the mantra in almost all cases.  There is an explosion in the last few years as far as innovation goes, for designing solutions based on needs and based on short term to long term views.  For example there is a widespread view that the Quantitative easing commenced by the Federal Reserve Board will lead to interest rates rising and easy money becomes less available. So if you are a borrower what would you do to reduce your interest payout? If you have surplus - you need a plan to increase your yield!  There are several products available to help you mitigate the risks with respect to interest rate volatility. These are for both the asset side and the liability side of the balance sheet. The new kind of risk that is gaining ground is the Competitive advantage risk. A product developed in a Country having a devalued currency will give the manufacturer an advantage over a product created in a Country whose currency has appreciated. We have seen this before when Japanese and Korean Car Makers flooded the markets in Europe and America.

S G Thampi: Is there is a dependency on Technology to handle increasingly complex products, engineering bespoke solutions and monitoring and controlling Financial assets, liabilities and the activities of the Corporate Treasurer.

Ravi Kumar: There are three pillars here. They are first - Financial Market innovations, second -emergence of new technologies with faster processors, bigger data storage, reliable architecture, easy and user friendly access and third the Regulators who are increasingly by their actions controlling and impacting the markets. The Market player’s needs technology to grasp the impact of the confluence of these three forces, technology that can provide relevant and timely information, transparent and clear bench marks closely aligned with the markets. It will be of great value and going forward I can definitely state that there is no way Financial Innovation can go on without ever improving technological support.

S G Thampi: Global events can impact markets and create volatility which can go beyond a regulators ability to control. Markets get buffeted and an uncertain period can be very unnerving for a Treasurer. How does a Treasurer address that, given the fact that news can flow from many directions and can impact decisions without any ability to verify the facts.

Ravi Kumar: Communication Technology has improved. Rapid innovations, wireless speeds, Smartphone's etc means that all market players are in touch 24x7. News flows from many directions. Ultimately decisions have to be taken.  There is abundant news, reviews, MIS from many sources and a fairly clear picture can be understood within a short period of time.

S G Thampi: Treasury operations and markets have shifted from the dealing rooms of banks into the dealing rooms of corporates. Many Bank dealers and Treasurers have moved to Organizations. Similar infrastructure which only Banks had earlier, is now available with Corporates. What is the impact going forward? Will banks be sidelined?

Ravi Kumar: The Volker rule placed some restrictions on the speculative trading done by Banks. Banks therefore have trimmed their dealing rooms and is emerging as a facilitator for managing client funds.  So Corporates today a choice. Their business goes to the Banks who manages provides best services, who provides tailor made financial innovations at beneficial rates. Corporates are witnessing global events and increasingly they want a say in monitoring their assets to tide over shocks that global events periodically deliver to the system. Unpredictable events that impact their fortunes (termed as Black swan events) are happening more often and mathematical models cannot mimic or predict such events and their after-effects as each event is quite specific. A clearly enunciated treasury policy is needed and yes, the Organizations will have a increased say in the way their assets are handled and they would like to do it directly to maintain independence and secrecy. All this provides IT Companies to develop and deliver systems that facilitates the Corporate Treasurer to obtain information on Liquidity and stop loss based on alerts.

S G Thampi: Is individual participation far off? Considering that there are more and more billionaires and even well informed and reasonably well to do people in Middle Class who are not risk averse? Will such products be of use to them?

Ravi Kumar: I Think this is the next logical step. The consequences for the wealth management industry  managing the portfolios of High Net Worth Individuals will have to improve transparency and also cope with increased demand for better performance at risk of losing business.  The products will help in hedging exposures and also in monitoring assets. I see mutual funds and pension funds using these tools and it will slowly percolate to the common man as well. I already see these happening in stock exchanges where individuals trade and with commodity trading and currency trading thrown open, there will be more awareness which will lead to the increased use of these products.

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Book your stay

A man has been admitted to large hospital, he is lying on the surgery bed with knives stabbed in his back. The doctor and the nurse enter. The doctor requests for the reports to be reached to him by evening. He sees the man lying and asks what happened to him? The nurse casually replies that this man was another victim to online booking sites. The doctor begins to remove one knife at a time. The first stab was when the man tried to book an airline ticket which got cancelled instead of refunding the ticket they stabbed him. The second stab was when he booked a four star room, not a single star was to be seen, it was a windowless room. The  third stab was when the man tried booking a bus, which was delayed by three hours. The doctor questions the man," why do you people get betrayed in this manner time and again?" the man replies, "there is no other option." The doctor takes out his phone and shows a one stop booking application where one can book flights, hotels and buses. The doctor says, " A trusted site, no cheating involved".
The  advertisement ends with the tagline, "better safe than sorry."
This Online booking application ad was aired about a year ago. Any guesses to which booking portal this advertisement was associated to? It is Goibibo.com

The ad was a simple portrayal of customers facing problems with online booking. Several people find it a skeptical method to book a stay online. Most prefer the traditional method of booking through an agent if they are not sure about the quality of the rooms and services. The reason being, If there are any cases of being cheated the claims can be handled much easily.
This situation was about two or three years ago when online booking engines were newly introduced and the system behind booking engines were not so smooth.
With rampant software development in this field booking engines have now picked up and are working more smoothly. Now business men/corporate's, leisure travelers and agents book tickets and rooms online. With several small and start up companies offering easy to use booking engines. Hotels are now buying ready made or tailor made engines then customizing it to their needs and using it. In fact, several hotels digitally market their services.

Booking Engines generally integrate with property management systems. In the hospitality industry a property management system also known as a PMS is a comprehensive software application used to cover some basic objectives such as coordinating the operational functions of front office, sales and planning etc. Automate hotel functions like guest bookings, guest details, online reservations, point of sale, telephone, accounts receivable, sales and marketing, banquets, food and beverage costing, materials management, HR and payroll, maintenance management, quality management and other amenities. Hotel property management systems may interface with central reservation systems and revenue or yield management systems, front office, back office, point of sale, door-locking, housekeeping optimization, pay-TV, energy management, payment card authorization and channel management systems.    

Global distribution systems (GDS)  is a network operated by a company that enables automated transactions between Third-parties and booking agents in order to provide provision travel related services to the end consumers. A GDS can link services, rates and bookings consolidating products and services across all three travel sectors: i.e., airline reservations, hotel reservations, car rentals, and activities. A GDS  will have real-time link to the vendors database. For example, when a travel agency requests a reservation on the service of a particular airline, the GDS system routes the request to the appropriate airline computer reservations system. This enables a travel agent with a connection to a single GDS to choose and book various flights, hotels, activities and associated services on all the vendors in the world who are part of that GDS.

With the integration of these two main systems a customer as well as the travel desks benefit, as these are smoother and smarter. With the progress of technology, Online booking sites are built to work on various platforms such as website, phones and tablets with responsive websites.

Customers and travel agents now find this a hazel free method to book a stay.
So good bye to stabs, for software development has now made booking of flights, hotels, buses easy and trust worthy.

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Treasury and Technology

In many organizations today, the Treasurer or the Treasury Head is considered to be in an important position. They usually report to the CFO and in some cases, directly to the person at the helm of affairs.

Why is this position so important? To understand that, one also needs to be aware of the global business scenario. In today's business environment, the entire world is a market place. One can obtain resources, and build revenues in any corner of the world. The world is getting smaller and is crying for goods and services. Organizations that can deliver their customers' requirements in an efficient and cost effective manner can reap the benefits.

At the same time, the world economy is buffeted from many sides, by very strong influences. A random act of terrorism, a civil unrest, a unpredictable political situation, a natural calamity, social unrest, war -  all can impact what is known as 'market sentiment', which can lead to uncertainties in the exposure an organization carries to a particular business or currency or economy.

Market sentiment is something to watch out for. The nature of the beast is such that, there is no saying which way the herd will move. Sometimes it is a wave, sometimes a knee jerk reaction. Currencies can get impacted, shares may rise or nosedive and commodity prices will fluctuate due to very illogical reasons.

It is the Corporate Treasurer who looks at his companies’ exposure and assets critically on a day to day basis, sometimes multiple times a day, to try and predict how global events shape the business environment. To some, his actions may look like a calculated gamble. For, it certainly is. Currencies fluctuate, assets get devalued and exposure becomes risky. Opportunities for investments appear and will contain risks. Will a gamble pay off? The Treasurer needs to decide how best to manage his assets in such a manner that risks associated with any change in sentiment minimally impacts the bottom line. In fact, at times, a shrewd Treasurer can even profit from the chaos.

Technology becomes the backbone to a Treasurer's activity. He definitely will need a dynamic dash board which shows the current and planned exposures. He will need screens displaying 'What if' scenarios which gives him a feel of how certain events can influence his balance sheet. Various mathematical and statistical models - messages data to produce predictive analysis. Technology becomes the enabler, a tool in decision making - either to invest or convert or even perhaps take a loan to meet his obligations.

Information is king or so goes the saying. One who can analyse the information based on past behaviour and has the experience to take decisions based on historic facts, current trends and his own analytical capabilities, then is an Emperor.

Yes, experience counts. The number crunching can be done by computers and software. Decisions on investments, conversions and raising funds needs human thinking.

The Treasurer also is guided and his activities are regulated by comprehensive Treasury policies and legislations which are monitored by market regulators. Organizations internally have checks and balances that ensure that no one person can take a call which falls outside the overall risk appetite as adopted by the Board. Here also technology plays an important role in setting benchmarks, risk limits, alerts and comprehensive MIS throughout the chain of command, besides enabling the Treasurer to facilitate straight through transactions, across multiple products covering Foreign Exchange, Money Market, Fixed Income, Equities, Mutual Funds, Deposits, Loans and Derivatives, all seamlessly interfacing with multiple systems including ERP and Banks, bringing about a much needed control with proper audit trail.

A good system will be a value for money system, with a short ROI, enabling controllers, managers and auditors everywhere access to information that is timely, accurate and relevant.  It will be technologically advanced, adaptable and scalable and will provide the users with real time information. Besides the system will have robust MIS capabilities, with abilities to cater to the disclosure requirements mandated by regulators, and a modern evolving data base which can be interfaced with Business Intelligence tools as they will serve a very useful purpose for forensic accounting (in case something goes wrong).

 It is a given that the system will address the IT security issues and boast of a very high quality of development standards and support. The development team will need good support from Subject Matter experts and Business Analysts and the end product should be thoroughly tested with all kinds of scenarios.

The best systems cannot replace the deeply analytical nature of the human mind. At best the system can be a facilitator, which over a period of time will evolve, support and eventually become an integral part of the Treasury Department as a Revenue Centre.

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