US Airways Chooses EDS/SHARES Reservations System
Today, US Airways announced that EDS/SHARES has been selected as the newly-combined company's reservations system. The EDS reservations system is currently used by America West Airlines and will be expanded throughout US Airways.
EDS has a history with both airlines. As the largest provider of global information technologies (IT) infrastructure services to the airline industry, EDS' technology reaches beyond the reservations system, which has allowed them to serve as US Airways outsourced IT partner since mid-2001. EDS has powered America West's reservations system and other technologies since its first flight in 1983.
Why EDS/SHARES?
Joe Beery, chief information officer, explained that the EDS/Shares was selected due to many factors, including:
* It's cost effective. EDS/SHARES offered the best price in per-transaction fees, and their initial costs and the cost of upkeep were the most competitive.
* It's user-friendly. An easy-to-use interface (QIK) was built and is maintained in-house (through America West Technologies). The user-friendly front end allows the airline to handle training in-house and reduces the time it takes to train new agents. In addition, passenger processing is faster through QIK, which makes passengers and customers happy, and ultimately helps the bottom line. Most importantly, QIK - through SHARES- sets our people up for success by providing a truly user-friendly tool for great customer service.
* It's flexible. Because we maintain the program in-house, we can make changes and enhancements to the program to suit our changing company, all at minimal costs.
What should we expect during the transition?
The transition is expected to take between 12 and 15 months, allowing time not only for training, but also to standardize (and modernize) the equipment in the stations system wide. The transition plan is in the works and will include a training and deployment plan. Affected employees will receive training details as a schedule is determined.
Some synergy stations have started training and, by most accounts, US Airways employees are finding the transition from Sabre to SHARES to be favorable. As one employee in CLT said, "I will admit that I arrived here believing that SABRE is the better system. After one week I am convinced that I was wrong. The QIK front of SHARES is phenomenal. There is absolutely no typing of code. Everything is Windows 2000 pop-up driven. Reissues with the touch of a button. Timatic programmed to just type a city code into a box. Edit codes automatically append. It is slick."
Again, affected employees can look for more details to come as the transition progresses and as the training schedule is confirmed.
Response- While I have only been using it for just under a week, it is fairly easy to use. Many of the entries appear to be easier, yet there are some things about it that definitely need to be updated and tweaked to make it more user friendly. Hopefully having the inhouse programming will make this possible. They do have a way for front line people to communicate via Y message directly to the programmers and I have seen the suggestion and response pages in the system. It does appear that they do listen and try to make adjustments if possible. They will no doubt be getting lots of mail soon.
Regarding the 12-15 month transition. Starting today this would put it at about Xmas time/New Years 2007. PLEASE DO NOT DO IT THEN!!!! We already did the Sabre conversion right before Tgiving and it was a fiasco. Even if we must wait another 3-4 months to totally convert it will definitely be worth it vs switching over at the busy holiday season. Learn from the past mistakes please.
Today, US Airways announced that EDS/SHARES has been selected as the newly-combined company's reservations system. The EDS reservations system is currently used by America West Airlines and will be expanded throughout US Airways.
EDS has a history with both airlines. As the largest provider of global information technologies (IT) infrastructure services to the airline industry, EDS' technology reaches beyond the reservations system, which has allowed them to serve as US Airways outsourced IT partner since mid-2001. EDS has powered America West's reservations system and other technologies since its first flight in 1983.
Why EDS/SHARES?
Joe Beery, chief information officer, explained that the EDS/Shares was selected due to many factors, including:
* It's cost effective. EDS/SHARES offered the best price in per-transaction fees, and their initial costs and the cost of upkeep were the most competitive.
* It's user-friendly. An easy-to-use interface (QIK) was built and is maintained in-house (through America West Technologies). The user-friendly front end allows the airline to handle training in-house and reduces the time it takes to train new agents. In addition, passenger processing is faster through QIK, which makes passengers and customers happy, and ultimately helps the bottom line. Most importantly, QIK - through SHARES- sets our people up for success by providing a truly user-friendly tool for great customer service.
* It's flexible. Because we maintain the program in-house, we can make changes and enhancements to the program to suit our changing company, all at minimal costs.
What should we expect during the transition?
The transition is expected to take between 12 and 15 months, allowing time not only for training, but also to standardize (and modernize) the equipment in the stations system wide. The transition plan is in the works and will include a training and deployment plan. Affected employees will receive training details as a schedule is determined.
Some synergy stations have started training and, by most accounts, US Airways employees are finding the transition from Sabre to SHARES to be favorable. As one employee in CLT said, "I will admit that I arrived here believing that SABRE is the better system. After one week I am convinced that I was wrong. The QIK front of SHARES is phenomenal. There is absolutely no typing of code. Everything is Windows 2000 pop-up driven. Reissues with the touch of a button. Timatic programmed to just type a city code into a box. Edit codes automatically append. It is slick."
Again, affected employees can look for more details to come as the transition progresses and as the training schedule is confirmed.
Response- While I have only been using it for just under a week, it is fairly easy to use. Many of the entries appear to be easier, yet there are some things about it that definitely need to be updated and tweaked to make it more user friendly. Hopefully having the inhouse programming will make this possible. They do have a way for front line people to communicate via Y message directly to the programmers and I have seen the suggestion and response pages in the system. It does appear that they do listen and try to make adjustments if possible. They will no doubt be getting lots of mail soon.
Regarding the 12-15 month transition. Starting today this would put it at about Xmas time/New Years 2007. PLEASE DO NOT DO IT THEN!!!! We already did the Sabre conversion right before Tgiving and it was a fiasco. Even if we must wait another 3-4 months to totally convert it will definitely be worth it vs switching over at the busy holiday season. Learn from the past mistakes please.