Achieving Fast Adoption & Response to Customers' Needs
Matthew Scott, Vice President, Cargo Pricing and Interline for Emirates SkyCargo, shares how bringing PROS digital pricing and science-based optimization helped them adapt to the changing industry and increased customer needs. Hear more about how Emirates SkyCargo and PROS partnered together to drive deeper adoption of their strategic digital initiatives that prepare them to address future trends in the industry.
About the Speakers
Matthew has over twenty years’ successful experience in the discipline of commercial sales strategy, pricing and revenue optimization, primarily within the Aviation and Tourism industry. He has gained a proven track record of achievement with strategic and organizational change, leading successful business development and account management teams, determining business readiness, developing and supporting change management capabilities across organizations and delivering financial value through strategic pricing and revenue optimization strategies. In his current role he is responsible for identifying, developing and driving tactical and strategic pricing policies for Emirates SkyCargo products and services that maximize point of sale performance and optimize revenue across the network. Matthew has an MBA (2020) and a Graduate Certificate in Business Administration (2018) from Griffith University in Australia.
Full Transcript
Matthew Scott: My name is Matt, and I'm the Vice President for Cargo Pricing and Interline at Emirates Sky Cargo here in our hub in Dubai. It's a pleasure to be able to participate in the 2021 PROS Outperform virtual conference. Emirates Sky Cargo was founded in 1985 as the air freight division of Emirates airline for the past 35 years. We have grown to be one of the leading airline air freight companies in the world, currently operating to more than 145 destinations across six continents. Our all widebody fleet of over 260 aircraft is a combination of Airbus A380 and Boeing 777s. Additionally, we also operate a dedicated fleet of 10 Boeing 777 freighter aircraft, which complement the passenger aircraft operation. Emirates and PROS have a longstanding relationship of more than two decades, and Emirates sky cargo is pleased to be extending that partnership further....
Following our recent announcement that we will be partnering on a number of new and exciting initiatives aimed at improving our customer’s digital experience. COVID hit our industry harder than most. In March 2020, we grounded our entire fleet for the first time in history, with lockdowns, mandatory quarantine, multiple new strains of the virus, keeping a passenger network active was almost impossible. Fortunately, though, cargo demand remains strong. We we quickly mobilize the 777 passenger fleet for cargo only missions, and our first flight was to Kuwait on the 16th of March. Initially, the need for PPE or personal protective equipment allowed Sky Cargo to operate critical charter flights to ensure the world could stay protected as the pandemic grew. With demand continuing to grow, we saw the opportunity to carry cargo in the cabins of our passenger aircraft. So following the appropriate approvals, our first flight took off to Bangalore and Delhi in early May. These passenger freighter aircraft provide an extra 12 tons of carrying capacity when we load cargo on the seats and in the overhead compartments. What started out is just a few aircraft quickly grew to almost 90 of our 777 aircraft, operating purely cargo only missions, bringing our global network back to 100 destinations within 100 days. Following the success of carrying cargo in the cabins, we decided to take it a step further and remove the economy seats from selected aircraft, effectively turning them into what we call mini freighters. In mid-June, we operated our first flight to Nairobi and Amsterdam. Our fleet of mini freighters have an increased carrying capacity of up to 16 tons in the cabin, which helps us better serve markets that have a requirement to transport loose cargo, such as PPE, but also garments and perishables. To this day, both our passenger freighters and our mini freighters continue to play a critical part in ensuring we can keep trade lanes open and continue to serve our customers' needs during the pandemic, whether it be PPE from China, vaccines from Europe, US, India, meat or produce from Australia, or textiles and garments from West Asia. Emirates Sky Cargo is there to support. Working with governments has also been key. Ensuring that we meet all the regulatory requirements of operating our aircraft in a safe manner was of critical importance to us. Between October 2020 and October 2021 Emirates Sky Cargo’s transported more than 400 million doses of COVID 19 vaccines from the us, from Europe, India and China, to more than 80 destinations through our hub here in Dubai. As part of the Dubai vaccine logistics alliance, we've partnered with DP world, the international humanitarian city and Dubai airports to combine expertise and strengths to expedite the movement of vaccines to developing nations through Dubai. We also entered into an MOU with UNICEF to facilitate the distribution of COVID 19 vaccines in support of the COVAX initiative, working for global equitable access to COVID 19 vaccines. Throughout all of this, Emirates Sky Cargo is being critically aware of the overall booking experience of our customers. We're all very time poor and we need to make it easier. Our industry was ready for digital disruption even before covid, but certainly the need for enhanced technology, more booking channels, direct connections with our customers and real time engagement is even higher on the agenda. Emirates was already heavily invested in going digital before COVID. Certainly, COVID put a pause on our thinking, but once we'd recovered our cargo operations, it was once again a key focus for us. Going digital is a long term strategy for us. The booking process in our industry is cumbersome and customers are asking us for more real time connections, connections that allow us to provide accurate, real time bookable rates with access to live capacity through multiple channels, and Emirates is keen to develop this technology. And that's where our partnership with PROS comes in. The focus on dynamic, real time pricing and booking capabilities is stronger than ever. Whether it be a direct connection to our customers chosen TMS or via third party platform, working with PROS will allow us to offer the right price through the right channel to the right customer. Creating efficiencies and cost savings for our customers. Emirates Sky Cargo has a solid digital strategy aligned to our overall customer journey. Ensuring our customers' needs are met is key and we're excited about our digital future. Listening to our customers, understanding the pain points and jointly developing and delivering a product that really strengthens our value proposition and maintains that high level of service and ultimately exceeds our customers' expectations is what really drives us. Certainly, getting investment for any project during the most challenging time our industry's ever experienced was difficult. But fortunately, the importance of this project was recognized by the business and the support was there to drive it forward. Having a customer first focus helped understanding where our customers were in their own digital journey and seeing how we could fit into that in a logical and pragmatic way. The end-to-end customer journey in our industries is quite complex, and the airfreight portion, whilst significant, is still only a small part of what our customers need to manage. We needed to make sure that what we were creating complemented the booking cycle, created efficiency, saved cost and provided that overall better experience. Emirate's Sky Cargo is excited about our digital future, and we're thrilled to be working with PROS. Thank you for the opportunity to present at PROS Outperform 2021 and from all of us at Emirates Sky Cargo. We wish you a wonderful conference.