If you manage an airport terminal, you already know that millions of passengers rely on you each year to get them into or out of the city you serve. But you also know that these passengers aren’t the only ones who rely on your ability to keep everything organized. If something goes wrong, it’s not just a few angry tweets or bad reviews. Those are part of the job.
It’s lost leverage in a contract, the cost to find a new tenant for a retail space, or lost revenue.
But if you’re like one MIBAR client, Terminal One Group, it’s not the service delivery, coordination, or customer satisfaction that was the problem. New Yorkers already know that—there’s a reason people choose JFK over LaGuardia or Newark: It’s the only above-average New York airport in the J.D. Power Rankings—also the only one that’s not ranked dead last in its respective category.
The problems came after the flights had taken off and reached their destination. The management group put it all on the line to deliver for airline consortium, the retail clients, and the passengers. Their challenges came about when it was time to bill.
Don’t Let Terminal Management Woes Terminate Your Business
Does that sound familiar? If so, we can guess that you’re probably relying on manual processes to manage contracts, billing, invoices, and retail management. It’s relatively common—because not many solutions exist for the incredibly specific needs you have. We can also assume that you’re a bit behind on billing or that your invoices are inaccurate. Do any of these sound familiar?
Billing is Behind
One of the most pressing challenges comes in the form of the incredibly complex contracts you manage with your airlines. Whether you’re just working with a few airlines or a couple dozen, you’re tasked with managing every moving part of the contract. Each contract changes from year to year, and your billing has to change with it.
Calculating every change, every ancillary service provided, and every dollar owed is complex. Trying to do so on paper often results in delays. Delays hurt your revenue streams and in turn make it an all-hands-on-deck venture every month- or year-end.
Invoices are Inaccurate
Have you ever noticed that someone is never mad when you undercharge them? Overcharge them and they seem to know immediately. Undercharge them and suddenly they’re shocked when you try to collect the rest.
Too often, this is the case for terminal managers relying on manual processes for their billing and invoicing. Things get lost, mixed up, or otherwise out of control, and you’re often stuck trying to make up the difference.
Managing Retailers is Painful
While you’re trying to deliver services for airlines, you can’t ignore the entire “giving customers amenities” thing. Not everyone has access to a lounge, so you’re also tasked with working with restaurants, newsstands, and more to provide products and services to passengers.
But in this, you have to make a few bucks too. Along with any of the other services, you have to run your own mall of sorts, collecting money from these clients as well.
Maybe Service is Slow, Too.
As we said, JFK didn’t have many challenges getting flights into and out of the airport, but for some terminal management firms, this may be an issue. De-Icing, forklifts, air conditioning, and more all play a major role in the timeliness of flights, but if your team has to field calls every couple minutes to handle this, the process of delivering these services may quickly devolve into chaos—all before you have to bill for them.
Wouldn’t it be nice if a manager walking around the terminal could request items and quantities, sign off on the request, and even send it through a workflow for additional approval?
Organizing Chaos: How One Terminal Stays in Control
If any of these challenges sound familiar, you’re not alone. You’re also not stranded without a solution designed to help you organize the chaos that goes into connecting millions of passengers.
With a combination of NetSuite, Microsoft PowerApps, and a custom solution from MIBAR, Terminal One Group at JFK Airport was able to reduce the amount of time spent chasing around documents, fixing errors, and trying to manually enter and change inputs.
Learn more about their story here.
Meet MIBAR: Your Source for Terminal Management ERP and solutions
Are we saying that we’re responsible for JFK’s rise from being near the bottom to having an above-average J.D. Power Satisfaction rating? You be the judge—especially after we finish implementing NetSuite for another terminal management group or two. We can certainly say that by improving timeliness, billing, and ancillary services booking that our implementation didn’t hurt.
Get to know more about our Terminal Management solution, Microsoft PowerApps, and our services, and contact us for a free consultation.
