Sqills tells all–a roadmap for a successful RM strategy

Profitability can be increased by earning more from existing bookings and reservations. How can we increase prices offered to better capture the ‘willingness to pay’ of consumers? How can we control the ever-increasing amount of key metrics and related decisions in order to maximise profitability on a complex rail network?

To do so, we should enable revenue managers to manage their responsibilities with the appropriate tooling. Tools that have been in place at airlines and hotels for considerable time and have proven to be critical to their existence.

We should realise that it is becoming increasingly difficult to master the required data for revenue optimisation by spread sheet management or worse, gut feeling. Revenue managers will need data and simulation tools to manage their short-, long haul and transfer network’s profitability. RM tools are designed to enable revenue managers to maximise revenue by making optimal use of forecast demand.

Upon accepting the concept of revenue management, the next hurdle for railways is often the implementation of RM software and the related uncertainty about results and costs. To cope with these uncertainties, a possible roadmap towards implementing revenue management software would be:

• Intake session: scoping the railway commercial policies, business logic, mixture of short haul, long haul and transfer offered, that are relevant for revenue management software configuration.
• Proof of concept: importing historical data and configuring the software should deliver test output that can be offset against railway operators expectations and leads to a go/no go decision.
• Installing and configuring the revenue management software within the railway operator IT systems such as a reservation system, inventory system, pricing system, to ensure smooth day-to-day operation etc.
• Training railway staff to use revenue management software and related consulting services where needed, both on the level of Business as well as IT departments during their task execution.

This post was kindly provided by Sqills, via a whitepaper following the Rail Revenue & Customer Management Congress last year. Get the full story by downloading the paper for free here.

You might also be interested in this related post – East Coast’s 3 ingredients for a successful RM strategy