Your Organization is the Single Source of Truth

To succeed in today’s hyper-connected customer environment, you must be the single source of truth, dynamically determining and delivering your best offer, in real time, through any channel.

What does this mean?

It means that you – and only you – must create your offers. You can’t outsource it to anyone. You create offers based on your knowledge of your products and services, knowledge of your customer, and strategic use of big data and predictive analytics.

Then, you deliver that offer to all the channels and points of contact with your traveler so your customer knows that no matter how they interact with you, it’s still the same relationship. They can rest assured that you will be consistent. In other words, you are the single source of truth.

If you don’t step up to this challenge, you will fail. If you delegate the creation of your offer to a middleman, your consumer relationship will be faulty and – you will fail. This is the competitive terrain we’re in now. It’s the world of the hyper-connected consumer. Consumers today are hyper-connected because they want to connect to the source – and that’s you.

The New Science

Dynamically creating and controlling the offer is the new science of Airline Revenue Management. In a study published last year, Atmosphere Research Group reported that airline executives see that the impact of Dynamic Pricing and Predictive Analytics will drive the biggest change in their distribution strategies. There’s a reason why scientists at leading universities around the world are being recruited by airlines to help redefine how they create their offers.

This is the way our industry – at last – is transforming into the world of retailing. Without question, this is the single most transformative time since the Internet was created. It’s not going to be easy and we all know why.

In my next post, I will address the challenge that airlines face in becoming the single source of truth.