Just joined the community. I'm an independent consultant based in Singapore/Sydney, focusing on the wider travel sector (especially airlines and hotels) in APAC. I've worked at AA and AN before, where I did quite a lot of IT project management. My current business details can be found at www.forumline.com.
It seems there are different types of challenges with APAC airlines. I work independantly with various eCRM, emailing and SMS solutions providers. I hope to be able to discuss all related issues with any one who is interested as such.
Meraj, thanks for joining the community; we're glad to have you aboard.
Your raising of CRM is a topic is interesting, but you're being a little coy: Why is CRM more challenging in APAC countries? Are you talking about issues of culture or business climate that may make adoption more difficult?
I'd be interested to know more about CRM projects/ implementation at any airline. I'm of the opinion that CRM could benefit my airline (United), but that costs and resource constraints will keep it from serious consideration at the enterprise level.
Thanks for the reply. CRM in APAC is affected by cultural issues, especially on a micro-level. Briefly, for example, the ability to cater for several different types of Asian naming systems is a challenge in itself!
However, some of the high-end airlines (SQ, CX, QF, JL) have already began to "use" their CRM. I mean this is "use" in a literal way because I don't think they have got their act together in the e-Marketing aspect. There's no point in having detailed data if you don't know how to communicate a personalised message using the right emailing tool.
On a different angle, I recently did a small B2B project for Emirates' (EK) Malaysian operation. They wanted to measure the effectiveness of their email communications to the 600+ local IATA agents. Previously they just "BCC'd" them via Outlook Express, and they had no idea who was receiving or opening their critical communications!
With a proper emailing engine (based on the IATA CRM which I customised for them), EK can now identify individually those agents that did not receive/open the email. All of these stats are then fed back into the CRM for further analysis. Of course, they can now start using the same process for the larger B2C CRM project.
In addition, the crux of CRM is to focus on FF members (the 20-80 rule). Many of the Asian carriers are not there yet in this aspect. Whichever way you look at CRM, the main purpose (in my opinion) is to identify and enhance the relationship with individual customers so that the process returns increased yields (revenue) per customer. Hence, the ROI for CRM should already be justified in the business analysis.
I hope this helps somewhat!
Can you elaborate on why United would find it difficult to implement a CRM solution?
