Outsourcing

General

In the current economic climate saving money is one of the primary reasons for outsourcing. If your airline is focused squarely on the bottom line, outsourcing offers you the opportunity to access the functionality of newer technologies without the cost and resource consumption that an internal implementation would require.

Every airline is faced with the problem of providing the best possible service at the lowest possible cost to the customer while retaining both customer and employee loyalty. This is easy to say but almost impossible to achieve.

Outsourcing is a valuable service to an airline that wants to save money, make things move more efficient, and above all to provide the best customer service possible.

Choosing the right outsourcing company is as important to an airline as hiring an employee. Ultimately what you are depending on is people skills, integrity, and character. Initially, look for outsourcing company that has experience similar to those you expect to receive. In your consideration for an off-shore outsourcing company you must consider the suitability of the country where your call center will be located. If you would not live there your call center should not be there.

Considerations

Legal tangles, pricing differences, time zones, confidentiality, and the availability of NAFTA "treaty national" visas have all combined to develop the new model of global outsourcing services. In this model, each component can be provided internally or through external outsourcing service providers. That complexity makes the CIO's job harder. Onshore-offshore service-contract issues are more complex, requiring customer input on unanticipated changes to the contractually planned equilibrium governing sourcing and delivery.

The decision to outsource starts with identifying the way the operation will be structured. So-called "detachable operations"--those that perform generic business services--seem to add little comparative value to the bottom line because they don't have a high ROI yet they consume substantial internal resources, including money, administrative personnel, and distractions to senior management. For a CFO, these operations may be advantageously outsourced. But managers assigned to transfer such operations to a third party are anxious about new skills required.

To ease the stress, global enterprises can structure and operate their own offshore "shared facilities" or "centers of excellence" to support their global-service organization. But there are trade-offs: Investing abroad subjects a business to foreign-governmental scrutiny, international trade unions, and potential conflicts between the need to maintain confidentiality and the need to transfer technology to lower-wage employees for the good of the global enterprise.

In response to the unique legal challenges to offshore outsourcing, a number of legal-structure options have developed. These include:

  • Direct contract with a domestic supplier that has offshore subcontractors or an offshore facility.
  • Direct contract with a foreign supplier with onshore account management and project-management teams.
  • Establishment of a shared-services subsidiary to handle administrative functions offshore.
  • Given the complexity, there appears to be little impetus for adopting a consortium model in which vendors--either domestic or offshore--provide integrated, though complementary, services, and the Vendors self-manage the interface among them.

The distributed global-service delivery model meets several customer needs. For example:

  • Project work can be distributed according to a variety of parameters. For large projects, this lets customers direct heavy work loads to low-wage service-delivery centers. For rapid-development projects, it allows teams in different countries to work continuously on a 24/7 collaborative basis. For sensitive projects in which proximity is perceived as better for security and confidentiality, onshore or near-shore work might yield the best result.
  • Like the Internet, a global-delivery model with multiple service centers allows rapid load balancing across borders based on wages, quality levels, skills, and work volume.
  • Quality processes developed in one country rapidly spread across borders. Foreign students learning in the United States/Canada return to their homelands and establish or serve multinational service providers.
  • Operational risks are reduced if a significant number of project managers, programmers, and other service providers remain onshore, at or near the customer's facilities. Such proximity mitigates risk in case of a sudden interruption of international trade in services.
  • By having multiple offshore centers, emerging global-service providers can distribute risks across national boundaries. No longer will an earthquake, political shifts, or a violent uprising in India, for example, stop an essential service, provided there is mirroring in Canada, China, Eastern Europe, or Latin/Central America.

    • Our Offerings

    Following is a general list of the outsourcing that Flight Data Management offers. If you are interested please contact us and we will put a proposal in place for you.

    • Airline Start-up Outsourcing

      • Feasibility Studies
      • Obtaining Financial Assistance
      • Selection of the proper Aircraft
      • Certification
      • Airport/Station Contracts
      • Reservation Center
      • IATA
      • Office Support Required
      • Accounting
      • Other Airlines
      • In-House and Remote Data and Voice Communication
      • Required City licenses
      • Hiring the Proper Personnel

    • Passenger Contact Call Centers

      • Outstanding customer service is an essential component of every airline's growth and success. However, if your reservation customer inquiry or help desk activity is higher than you can efficiently handle in-house, you may want to consider outsourcing these functions. Call centers can help you efficiently assist your customers by fielding calls, whether they are for technical support, addressing customer inquiries, or taking reservations. The areas to be consider by an airline are:

    • Passenger/Cargo Reservation Center

      Are you a cargo airline looking to save money, but also insisting on quality?

      Then you have come to the right place. Flight Data Management, Ltd. offers outsourcing for cargo airlines. We take care of the reservation requests of your forwarder clients, cargo agents, companies and individuals and inform as well as advise them about all questions relating to freight handling. We can establish a warehouse facility for you at all of your airports, provide The personnel for the warehouse and also for the cargo operations.

      You outsource, we step in for you - with the high quality you are used to getting from Flight Data Management, Ltd..

      We are aiming at all cargo airlines that want to save money in the right place. Reducing costs through outsourcing should not result in any reduction in quality. We can tailor our service to meet your high demands.

      All of the process that link an organization to it's customers, which includes customer selection, customer acquisition, customer relationship.

    • Airline Finance and Accounting
      • Credit Card Processing and Accounting
      • Airline Interline Proration
      • Revenue Coupon Processing
      • BSP Related Services
      • ACM Related Services
      • Airline Financial Analysis and Support

    • IT Outsourcing

      The demand for offshore outsourcing will account for 28% of IT budgets in the World in the next two years.

      • Servers
      • Terminals
      • System Programming
      • Application Programming

    • Airline Marketing and e-Marketing Support Services
      • Frequent Flyer
      • CRM Processes Management
      • eMarketing and ePromotions Management
      • Market Research

    • Airline Ground Services and Support
      • Airline Centralized Departure Control
      • Airline Centralized Load Control

    • Airline Front Office Call Centers

      • The term "call center" traditionally refers to centralized areas where mass inbound or outbound phone communication takes place. A classic example is an airline reservation center. While today's "call centers" or "contact centers" can interact with customers using email and live Web chat, most still do it traditionally by phone. Outbound call centers are dedicated mostly to telemarketing; inbound call centers deal largely with existing or new customers.

        When should you enlist the services of a call center? Since initial set-up costs can be quite high, you will find it is not worthwhile to use a call center for just a one-time project. It makes sense to consider a call center if your call volume is frequent, regular, and directly related to guaranteed revenue generation. For example, if you regularly receive 500 reservations inquiries per day and over 50 percent of those convert to bookings, letting us put in a call center might be a good idea, whereas a 100-inquiry per day, even if each call ends in a reservation, is probably better handled in-house.

        Generally speaking, a call center will set you up with either dedicated or shared agents. Dedicated agents are costlier and more specialized in their knowledge, because they will deal only with your customers. Shared agents, trained to address clients for multiple accounts, work better for lighter call volumes, less critical functions, or irregular call activity. In both cases, you will need to provide as much information on call scripts, customer habits, and your company's background as possible. Usually the center can seamlessly integrate with your company's Web site or software, entering information directly where it needs to go. Reservation call centers are best as dedicated centers.

        Call center service contracts can run month-to-month or up to several years. Startup costs for program set-up include agent training, and usually run about $2000-$3000. In general, a program using shared agents will be billed by call duration, usually $.70-$1.00 per minute. Dedicated agents are more expensive, usually billed at an hourly rate of about $25. These costs include customized reporting.

      • Airline Call Centers
      • Airline Contact Centers
      • Airline Help Centers
      • Customer Inquiry

    • Airports/Stations
      • Check-in
      • Boarding
      • Station Office
    • Airline Decision Support
      • Airline Data Mining and Processing
      • Airline Data Analysis for Decision Making

    • Airline Fares/Rules Support
      • Airline Fares Research and Establishment
      • Loading/Entry and Maintaining Fares
      • Airline Refunds Processing
      • ATPCO Fares/Rules Processing

    • Airline Flight Support
      • Airline Flight Schedule Research and Establishment/Maintenance
      • OAG Flight Filing/Updating
      • OAL Flight Filing/Updating

    • Airline Business Process Re-engineering and Airline Business Process Automation
      • Consulting, solutions development and support (BRP and BPA)
      • Airline industry best practices consulting
      • Process improvement consulting and solutions
      • Work-flow automation consulting and solution development

    • Financial Outsourcing
      • Accounting
      • Credit Card Processing
      • Clearing Houses
      • Coupon Reconciliation
      • General Ledger

    • Yield Analysis
      • Load balancing