Help me to help you!

Or how to improve RevMan / Sales working together

Sales and RevMan

Ultimately, Sales and RevMan are on the same side:

We both want the business to succeed,

We both want to grow the revenue stream,

And we both want to be considered star players

But its also true that we approach the business in different ways

Sales focuses on closing deals and increasing revenue by selling the

companys services

RevMan focus on maximizing profits while limiting costs

Issues between Sales and RevMan may arise if the departments establish
performance targets that fail to consider the other department.

When all is said and done, we are more alike than different.

When it worked well

Setting up trucking between NRT and HND

Coordination between Sales, RevMan, and Network departments
Stronger customer proposition and more efficient use of capacity

SIN inbound baggage forecast correction

SIN station notified RevMan that 1 AKE per day was clawbacked compared to
baggage forecast
RevMan investigated and liaised with the relevant teams to get the forecast
corrected
The forecast is now more accurate, giving more time to sell that extra AKE

Inbound hurdles

Hurdles have been decreased to help Sales to react to market conditions

CPA have been agreed to help on some sectors

When we could have done better

BKK inbound flight configuration

BKK inbound has always been more profitable than outbound
Could have reacted more quickly to market changes and feedback for pallets
This was not giving us the best results inbound

Sales ignoring RevMan recommendations

GRU sent shipments to BKK that were not accepted by RevMan
Created backlog of 13 days on BKK flight damaging IAG relationship with
customers
SIN offloading a LHR-SYD pallet of a BSA customer to accommodate XPS
Further strained the relation with top customers, adding to the disastrous
operational performance over the past couple months

We can definitely do better for our customers and the network by

working together better

How can we work better together?

Eliminate department silos by sharing data

Sales and Revenue Management have their own data set / sources,
sometimes containing contradicting information
Critical reports should be made common (customer performance, allocation
utilisation), so both Revenue Management and Sales can refer to them

Use common systems

QNNR calculator: great tool to get an estimation of the QNNR of each flow of
business, used by both departments
Optima System: will help Sales when offering deals or rates to customers

Sharing some performance targets

We are sharing the same goals and should not establish performance targets
that fail to consider the other department
RAs should give their input and are accountable for meeting some of the
financial plan targets

How can we work better together?

Get social

The foundation of any healthy relationship is communication

Most often the adversarial Sales/RAs relationship is not a people but a
communication / understanding problem
We cannot depend on once-a-year meetings / teleconferences

Sales and RAs could have monthly review calls where we can discuss among
other things:
- Inbound Product management
- Inbound Hurdles management
- Inbound low QNNR management
- Inbound Allocation management
- Inbound Overbooking management

How can we work better together?

Align around the customer Not the department

RA should be aware of the deals agreed with the customers and keep their
decisions consistent
Sales should be aware of customer performance issues (Business at Risk)
and help to resolve problems before signing further deals
Sales should give input about business / customers as realistic as possible
RA to share changes in strategy that are likely to affect the customers
(capacity, rates, etc.)

Building and Maintaining Relationships

Sales brings the strength of profitable client relationships to revenue

management strategy
Revenue Management brings the strength of facilitating comms between
Sales and other IAG departments
We need to get in a situation where each department trust that what the other
department is doing is in the best interest of the airline

Going forward

Over the last year, relationship between RevMan and the

Sales team in AsiaPac has really improved

We need to keep on building on this good foundation:

As a RA, I can increase my focus on the inbound sectors to help Sales

reaping the full potential of the inbound market (if it proves to add value to the
network)

Sales should also provide feedback more often on how things are, good or
bad, on the inbound sector (i.e. keeping the inbound RA in the loop)

We want to get to a point where the relationship between

AsiaPac Sales and RevMan would be the model to follow for
the other regions

Any Questions?

Thanks