Case Study
AVIOSDelivery of In-Flight Hybrid Payments, Buy on Board
The Assignment
Avios (formerly known as Air miles) are part of the International Airlines Group (IAG) and they provide British Airways (BA), also part of the same group, with Loyalty Scheme services. BA made the commercial decision to withdraw the provision of complimentary snacks and beverages on short-haul flights. At the same time BA would for the first time be accepting payment by Avios Points for products sold during the in-flight service, this included hybrid payments of part cash/card and part Avios points redemption.
The assignment was to design and implement the payment processes, create customer communication and build a financially compliant reconciliation solution. The deadline was 12th
January 2017, which was not only publically communicated but was later chosen as a day of industrial action by BA Cabin Crew in a dispute with their employer.
Our Involvement
One of our Payments Consultants adopted the hybrid role of Project Manager and Business Analyst to design and implement the end-to-end solution.
This required strong stakeholder management with BA to ensure that expectations were appropriately aligned with the plan and the management of two offshore and one onshore team. In addition, in-flight service transactions were facilitated by hardware and merchant procession by a third party that also had a “dotted line” into our consultant.
Our Approach
This project was already initiated and had been failing, so our consultant first conducted a brief audit to establish the critical path and identify any threats to it.
He then engaged the core team, established governance and set about designing the new payment processes. In parallel to this one of the offshore teams was tasked with creating new software for the POS and the other teams with the financial reporting across the BA and Avios businesses.
Our Clients Results
The new payment service was delivered on time and just under budget.
Skills & Experience Used
- · Commercial awareness
- · Stakeholder Management
- · Thought leadership
- · Intelligence gathering
- · Project Management
- · Business Analysis
- · Requirements Gathering
- · Vendor Management
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