Our philosophy has always been to treat our clients as partners. We endeavor to listen, understand
their unique business needs, and provide our best support, advice, and guidance on maximizing the
use of our solutions. We see adversities in the light of opportunities and innovation – finding new
ways of doing the same things. Here’s an account of how we revisited our approach and added more
momentum since the Covid times.
We See Underlying Opportunities to Boost Collaboration
During Covid the Client Services Passenger Team wanted to understand the impacts of the pandemic,
and initially held webinars to discuss challenges. This led to the introduction of new functionality
around demand forecasting and capacity management. We also wanted to better understand how
the solutions were currently used. We would identify which modules are utilized, how key functions
are configured and used, or equally importantly, not used, allowing us to be more targeted with our
account management. This evolved into an internal initiative called ‘Project Discovery’ which defined
three key areas of focus of short and longer-term objectives.
- User Health (Analyst workload and flow, login activity and screens used, active settings and use,
key settings and configuration) - System Health (Process performance, quarantine data, missing critical data)
- Performance Metrics/Health (Revenue capture, performance analysis, forecast accuracy)
Our first area of focus was to create system health and key settings alerting to automatically monitor
critical system inputs, allowing us to be even more proactive with our technical support. This was in
anticipation of moving out of the pandemic with system use returning toward normal levels, as we
wanted to ensure systems were effectively configured. This was also a recognition that some
assistance may be needed to get RM systems back up and running due to reduced resource levels.
We were able to identify missing inbound data, expired critical settings and processes, or missing
reference data for new routes and changed schedules. This allowed us to quickly resolve these issues
or discuss and advise the client on any required changes and assist with running key processes. This
has now been developed as the RTS Velocity Alert Center module and will continue to help identify
anomalies and items of concern before clients may be aware of them.
We Walk The Extra Mile To Leverage In-Person Interactions
After attending our first post-covid conference, our initial chance to meet clients and peers in two
years, the value of being face-to-face was clear. It was so useful to understand first-hand the changes
and challenges faced. However, as our clients’ businesses are all unique, we decided a more formal
process to capture and understand the post-covid RM world was necessary. In addition, we could see
that client staff turnover and retirements had meant the loss of significant knowledge and know–
how.
Therefore, we offered several days of new or refresher education sessions, and provided these
remotely where necessary. As part of this process, we created application settings and business
review checklists, which can be partially completed in advance to focus agenda items and drive the
discussions and education sessions. This allowed us to offer recommendations on how applications
could be used differently. We could identify existing, or new settings that could be utilized and
suggest configuration options or identify wider business changes and begin planning for this future