Off Paper

The Emirates Group software division is softening up to cargo

Duncan Alexander, Vice President, Mercator

Who would have thought that one day international companies would be using software developed in the Middle East? Innovation coming out of this region, and copied in others, after all, is mostly unheard of. This is not the case, however, for Mercator, the software arm of the Emirates Group, which is marketing its developments to airlines around the world.

It all started 14 years ago when Emirates built its own revenue accounting system, says Duncan Alexander, Vice President, Mercator. “Twenty per cent of international ticket sales worldwide go through that system.”

And now Mercator is looking to score a large share of the freight market, with its cargo management system SkyChain. The software developed one and a half years ago takes care of sales and reservations, pricing, capacity management and cargo operations. “It completely drives out paper,” says Alexander, “Dubai is the only place in the Middle East that is completely e-freight compliant. The airline and the customs are paperless. Everything is processed automatically.”

Mercator has already scored international clients Swissworld Cargo, Sri Lankan Airlines and Virgin Atlantic Cargo. “Now we’ve got Midex, a local carrier which is very small,” adds Alexander. “We implemented them in 69 days. It demonstrates that we have enough flexibility for a very small airline. Swissworld Cargo, in terms of size, is probably somewhere in between Emirates and Midex. We’re now able to say, ‘Look, it doesn’t matter the size or shape of your operation, we can do it.’”

The company also has a new revenue accounting system designed specifically for cargo. This is unlike any other product, says Balraj Nair, Senior Business Analyst (IT) for Mercator. “Usually you have a revenue optimisation system, which uses algorithms to compute demand,” he explains. “We’ve taken a different approach, which is cost-based. You can feed in different costs into the system, like your station cost, your ground handling costs and your operating costs. The moment you create a reservation, the system has the ability to tell you if that shipment is making a profit or not.”

ON BOARD

Mercator has just joined Cargo 2000. “From an airline point of view, we are fully compliant,” says Balraj Nair, Senior Business Analyst (IT), Cargo & Logistics Deparment, Mercator. “The next step is to create an interface with the freight forwarders.” He says the company currently does not have plans to develop such a common data management platform. “We are thinking about interfacing to an existing CDMP,” he says, but he’s not sure which one. “We have not decided yet, we have started the negotiations.”