ONE Order, as described by IATA, is “an industry-led initiative aiming to simplify the airline reservation, delivery, and accounting systems by gradually phasing out the current booking and ticketing records (PNRs, e-tickets, and EMDs)…combining those multiple records into a single retail and customer-focused order”.
ONE Order,as described by IATA, is “an industry-led initiative aiming to simplify the airline reservation, delivery, and accounting systems by gradually phasing out the current booking and ticketing records (PNRs, e-tickets, and EMDs)…combining those multiple records into a single retail and customer-focused order”.
If this sounds as if ONE Order is another set of standards and messaging protocols for the industry’s back-end, you’re right. But what these standards can make happen is a potential gamechanger.
Any talk of standards in travel must refer to NDC as there is a very strong relationship between NDC and ONE Order.
So, what do you need to know about ONE Order?
The future of the travel industry depends on it
Admittedly this is a bullish projection, but there’s more than a grain of truth here. NDC allows airlines to have greater control and autonomy over what they sell through different channels – “the offer”. But an airlines’ creativity here is capped because of the limitations from legacy standards and processes – as defined by the needs of PNRs, EMDs, or e-tickets – and it limits what the airlines can deliver – “the order”.
NDC and Offer Management Systems allow airlines to create rich and personalized offers for passengers. ONE Order ensures that the airline can deliver what has been sold to the passenger and account for it in real time in their back-office, allowing them to take quicker and more efficient commercial decisions.
Without an effective order management system in place, the full potential of NDC and more refined retail strategies cannot be fulfilled. The industry has been talking the talk about retailing, merchandising, and personalization for years – ONE Order means it can happen with full force.
It’s nothing new for other industries
IATA introduced ONE Order at its World Passenger Symposium in 2015, describing it at the time as “a single customer order record holding all data elements required for order fulfillment across the travel cycle”.
“Single customer order records” may be new to airlines but other industries such as retailing are very familiar with the concept. One of the main reasons why retailers use Order Management Systems is to get a single view of the customer orders regardless of their touchpoint (brick-and-mortar, e-commerce, partner stores) or the product (own products, third party products). For years, retailers have capitalized on this single source of truth concept to simplify the interaction with other systems, fulfilment, servicing and delivery processes.
ONE Order is a transformational change that means travel will soon be able to deliver on the potential of an end-to-end experience for the traveler, combining offers from airlines, airports, rail, ground transport, and many other areas.
NDC was launched a few years earlier than ONE Order, allowing for comparisons between the development roadmaps for the two standards. NDC has progressed a lot since its inception and the industry is now at the edge of its industrialization. After six years, the scope of ONE Order standards is of course not fully defined but there is already a wide acceptance of them within the industry. Some airlines or key technology companies such asNavitaire andAmadeus are already ONE Order certified by IATA. The convergence of the two standards is inevitable because that is where the most value can be derived and delivered.
There has been progress and pilot schemes
Amadeus and other providershave run some successful pilots using the earliest iterations of the ONE Order messaging standard. We were quick off the block – in 2017, whenwe partnered with British Airwaysto conduct the first proof of concept using ONE Order messages in a live production environment.
We also successfully tested the simplification and interoperability potential of existing messages in a more complex real-life scenario, building a modern interline connection between airlines of different business models namelySingapore Airlines and Scoot. We have used NDC and ONE Order standards together to create a single Order for a two-leg trip on a full-service and low-cost carrier using different passenger service systems (Amadeus Altéa and Navitaire New Skies respectively) while checking-in passengers throughout the full journey.
Getting there, one step after another
As with NDC, a lot of the early versions of ONE Order have already been updated or will be updated. NDC reached a tipping pointwhen “17.2” was released – the consensus among IT providers is that this version is robust enough to work at the scale needed for mass adoption.
While we are still improving details based on the different pilots we have finalized, the industry is ready to create an Order Management System. It will constitute the foundations upon which airlines and their tech partners can build their retailing and personalization capabilities. Everything that we do in Amadeus together with our customers and partners on ONE Order is shared with permission with IATA and workgroups so that the feedback can be used to continuously improve the ONE Order standard.
And when it does, there will be more to come
The airline industry is used to dealing with external shocks – even before the pandemic there were financial crashes, ash clouds, and geopolitics. Keeping an eye on the future while negotiating the present is a challenge that generally the industry has met and overcome.
So, while air traffic dropped significantly in 2020, we are working hard with our customers and partners to maintain the NDC momentum, with ONE Order work continuing while attending to the here and now.
Fast forward to a time in the future when NDC and ONE Order are operating in harmony. Airlines will be offering passengers a range of personalized flight offers via NDC, confident that a fit-for-purpose order management system, powered by ONE Order, is connecting their delivery systems, revenue accounting, and other back-office fulfillment systems.
In this scenario, the dynamic offer capabilities provided by NDC need ONE Order to thrive. Thanks to this combination airlines will be able to price their personalized offers according to signals from the passenger and indications from competitors. Once a booking is made, airlines with modern order management systems will be able to truly harness the benefits of NDC to maximize revenue from every passenger.
Takeaways
As the adoption ofNDC progresses, so will ONE Order, and the combination of the two will mark a meaningful change in the relationship between airlines and passengers, and beyond.
Streamlining the communication between revenue accounting and delivery systems is at the core of the retail transformation for airlines. It will deliver a more interactive experience to the customer and quicker insight to the airlines.
Being able to offer and order what the passenger wants to buy; empowering customer decisions at any touchpoint; simplifying and personalizing the travel experience, all these improvements are part of the path torebuild traveland are within reach.
Ultimately, this will unlock an exciting new era of travel.
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