34 APRIL 2008 GHI ITupdate that a positive business case can support the user in the right decision, while differentiating that user from competitors. Such an edge can be enough to gain a new customer. Looked at dispassionately, the simplified and easy graphical interface can help staff in their daily work. Luc believes that there is no need for more than a week’s training to familiarise an operative with the system, with less than one day required to understand the full application. Moreover, no initial knowledge of WorldTracer is required for the agents. During a peak period, for example, it is possible to use check-in agents or staff from other departments to help out. Secondly, the interfaces and the process automation speed up the data entry and incident resolution. Thirdly, the outputs and available options add services for the benefit of the passenger: professional output documents, IVR, kiosk, mobileAHL, PaxDelivery and the like all fall under this category. Some Key Performance Indicators have been identified amongst existing customers and these speak for themselves: Swissport, for example, managed to reduce its daily shifts from three to two at a call centre, thanks to the IVR module. It also achieved economies through SkyAssist’s flight and BagAutorush modules. Air France physically reduced its baggage scanning and passenger matching process by a staggering 78%. But the company that made the most precise analysis was Flightcare: every transaction was timed to compare with entries in native WT emulation and the result has shown drastic improvements. Even with a few interfaces (compared to some other customers), the productivity difference for the complete file creation and transaction process has been recorded as a 63% time saving, equating to a saving of the equivalent of six FTEs at Brussels airport. And this can be further improved upon with the new, promising modules in the self-service and mobile applications. For Koenraad De Souter, ICT Manager at Flightcare Belgium, it is an historical partnership. “Flightcare Belgium’s co-operation with SkyAssist is a long lasting story, which goes back to the mid-1990s, when the first application was implemented. Ever since the upgrade towards BagAssist in 2003, Flightcare Belgium has been fruitfully using both the BagAutorush module at baggage control level and the BagAssist Suite (AHL, DPR, OHD, DR, Flight, Delivery and IVR) at the arrival point. Our Lost & Found staff have become so familiar with the user-friendly BagAssist applications that non-existence of the system would be beyond our imagination. Above all, it allowed us to accomplish a service improvement for our customers and achieve significant staff productivity. Flightcare Belgium is looking forward to putting into service future developments in order to keep a step ahead of our competitors at Brussels airport.” The Air France/ KLM story At the end of 2006, Air France and KLM selected the BagAssist product for implementation at Paris Charles de Gaulle and Amsterdam Schiphol airports. The aim of this strategic choice was to solve baggage incidents in a quicker and more effective way. Production cutover successfully occurred at the end of January 2007 in Paris and in March 2007 at Schiphol. Air France was the first to use BagAssist without the Flight Module, which ran in a pilot mode for two months. After this evaluation phase, Air France decided to roll it out in all Lost & Found departments of CDG until the summer of 2007. For the following six months Air France and KLM worked on the next implementation phase. Since February 2008, they have been using BagAssist with the Flight module and interfaced with the Air France Tracking System, Departure Control Systems and WorldTracer. The same month KLM started to analyse the quick settlement module in order to support damaged baggage handling at the Lost & Found department at Schiphol. With its friendly graphical interface via an Internet browser, BagAssist was found to be very easy to learn. Because it is more intuitive and interactive it has led to a better quality of service in the solving of baggage incidents and has facilitated the daily work of the agents. Since it is Web-based, it has also been easy to roll out and is accessible from any PC. “In the case of mishandled baggage,” comments the spokesperson, “customers expect reactivity from airlines and quick return of their baggage. To retain passenger loyalty at this difficult moment, quality of service and professionalism of agents is crucial. BagAssist allows them to work faster, to find and to process baggage more efficiently than before. Moreover, BagAssist automatically produces all required documents for both passengers and agents. For example, the agents can deliver the Property Irregularity Report with references and contacts to the passenger, the custom declaration for checked baggage to pass the baggage in bond and the inventory form to check the contents of the baggage. The agents can also manage the delivery process from the airport to the delivery company with the delivery form and label tags produced by BagAssist. “Now, Air France and KLM are looking to go one step further. More integration of BagAssist with AF and KLM systems will allow the automatic retrieval of more data and will avoid as much as possible manual data entries such as passenger full contact (for frequent flyer passenger) and routing based on baggage tag numbers. A customer approach that is more pro-active has to be discussed with SkyAssist to see how it could be supported. “Air France/ KLM has significantly contributed to enhancing the BagAssist Product and hopes that future BagAssist users will benefit from new releases to further improve the quality of the service.” Centralising operational cost From bags to load control. Looking to the future has always been a core value within the complex world of IT. Over the last decade, IT has increasingly come to the aid of the handler and the aviation sector in general. And one of the areas to benefit has been that of load control. Actually, there’s little new about electronic load control; most of the world’s carriers have some sort of system that calculates mass and balance. But a smaller number of carriers have gone further down this road and set up their own centralised load control systems, or CLC. As with so many things in the aviation sector, there are various solutions available but many tend to be specific to the carrier in question. Amadeus, though, recently developed its Altea departure control application, with a view to introducing to the industry a uniform approach to the subject. Its launch customer