In Conversation
The global technological solutions company “endava” has been driving innovations and transforming businesses of their clients based in over 25 countries. Within their 13 industry verticals, travel is one of the most important sectors where they serve airlines and airports. In a candid discussion, Dejan Cusic, SVP, Travel Industry, endava briefs Vishal Kashyap, Managing Editor Aviation World about how they see their market in the near future and best technical solutions they have for their customers. Excerpts…
Looking into the growing Indian Aviation, how do you project to tap the sector in near future?
India is too big market to ignore and it’s a growing market. So, it is something we will definitely focus on in the future. As we are speaking now, we don’t have any presence there, but we are considering our options how to penetrate into the Indian market. There are a few ways and at the moment we are deciding on our options. Similar situation we had in Australia two years ago as we didn’t had our presence there but now we have 300-400 people in that region. So, I don’t know but on the next Arab Aviation Summit we’ll talk and I’m sure that story will be different in a year time related to India.
How convenient it is to adapt to endava products and use it?
We have lot of technology knowledge people implementing our technology. We don’t have any specific product but how it works is typically we would come to airline sometimes with our idea and explore their idea and then we would do project and implement what they want.
Almost always it’s bespoke software development. Why bespoke? Because once when you go with out of the box product, it’s very hard to differentiate yourself because everyone else has it. So we would go and do a very custom build program for particular business problem for our clients.
Your products/technology seems to be very unique, so post-implementation will it have any cost impact on the passengers?
It’s a very generic and as I mentioned a few things and one was NDC one order. So the whole idea behind new distribution channel in one order is that airlines will be able to upsell and cross sell products from other people. For example, a few days ago, I came from Europe to Dubai and the airline turned out that internet which was quite expensive on my roaming tariff from Ireland. I’m wondering what options you have. You go to the first shop and you buy SIM card locally, you put it in your phone and you have your data through local carrier.
That’s one way to do it. The other way to do it would be may be for the airlines on the booking part when I’m booking, maybe to sell me eSIM. And before I fly, I scan eSIM and when I land in Dubai, I already have local SIM.
So I think that’s the future for airlines to think about what else they could sell for us. And we will actually like it and appreciate it because it will make our life easier. And as in case of this eSIM, if I would have it, I wouldn’t bother around buying it.
So you see my point. And that will enable because they will make more money on ancillaries, which I’m willingly paying because I need it. That will enable them to make their basic offering more attractive as well. I believe that is going to be a very good solution for your customers.
Any particular point that you want to highlight and share with our readers?
Again, great industry, great place to be for the airlines. You know all the stories about the future demand as technology will play a big part of it. One thing which is mentioned quite often now is sustainability and we did first moves in terms of how technology could help with sustainability.
Airlines and aviation as an industry is quite an old industry with a lot of legacy systems, and we have some specific interesting tools and methodology how we help airlines to transform their IT systems.
(The interaction was done at Arab Aviation Summit, in Ras Al kahimah, UAE)
