Airport_Business_June-July_2019 - 32

TECHNOLOGY
identify groups of people who would
need reminders for certain dates and items
and send them the letters.
They also wanted to have the ability
to eventually have concessions report to
the airport to give leaders immediate
information about revenue.
Thomas said the drive for a new
system was driven internally at John
Wayne. The airport's finance department
was content with the old system, but they
needed something to take them off the
hook with ad hoc reports.
"There was a delay in data passing
back and forth between our property
management department and our finance
department," she said. "Plus, properties,
they were doing a lot more investigations
into building up and enhancing our
concessions, so it all evolved over the
past two years where properties stepped
up and said 'gee, if we had this kind of
data, there's a lot more we could do in
terms of anticipating what we need going
forward in terms of revenue."
Since implementation began, Thomas
said they've seen efficiencies appearing
across. They've saved time in insurance
compliance time and it created efficiencies
for the property management department
by having all of their documents online
in one place for easy reference.
Even for management, there's a lot
of reports on monitoring and auditing
capabilities while accounts receivable
staff no longer has to manually perform
data entry.
"The final piece of the puzzle and
another reason we were interested in a
new and advanced system is this tenant
portal," she said. "We can get real time
sales and other revenue information.
That's still on the planning board."
Thomas said she utilized her
knowledge of needs for John Wayne and
talked with the finance department to
find out their needs. It took about one
year to get all the necessary information
and send it out to get a vendor.
Implementation has taken another
year, because Thomas said it has been
done in stages. They started with
the insurance department, then the
properties department and then the
finance department. Finance has a heavy
workload so Thomas said they had to pick
a time to get them involved and learning
a new system, then entering the data.

Entry of data is the biggest investment
in a switch, which was compounded
when John Wayne decided to enter it
manually into the new system.
"I chose to have us do it manually," she
said. "My purpose was that our existing
system had some old data, incorrect data
and I don't believe in cluttering up a
brand-new shiny system with old data.
It was actually an opportunity for us to
reroute things, to not include things that
should have been deleted a long time ago
and clean up the data."
Malaviya said medium to large hub
airports should allow at least 12 month
lead time before they need to finalize the
budgets. For small hubs and non-hubs, six
month period is sufficient.
Airports should do both internal
and external research in finding the new
software. The internal research should
provide clarity on the existing gaps and
the source of the gaps. The gaps could
be due to system limitations or lack of
training. The external research includes
interviewing other similar airports and
understanding lessons learned.
"They should share the existing gaps
with the potential vendors and try to get
a sense of their capabilities in bridging
those gaps," Malviya said. "The airports
should also ask about additional features
that vendors can bring to the table to
improve the airport's business. These
could be features and capabilities that
the airport didn't think of.
"The airports should also pay close
attention to the vendors offering beyond
revenue management software as the
world is moving towards integrated
solutions, Lastly, airports should evaluate
the vendors on their aviation expertise."

Head to the cloud
Stewart said airports are finally starting
to adopt web-based systems compared
to server-based. They're now willing to
entertain a subscription service, which
helps developers as well.
"It's so much harder to support an on
premises installation now that we actually
discount our hosted option below our on
premises option," he said.
A SAS system can also assist in
security. If an airport is hit with an
ransomware attack, it can prevent the
airport from losing everything. Data
backups are done nightly and stored

32 \ AIRPORTBUSINESS / JUNE/JULY 2019

offsite.
"Airports need to gain a good
understanding of the current bottlenecks
and how they could potentially be
solved with a cloud solution," Malaviya
said. "Also, they need to be aware of any
impacts or changes in the system usage
in a cloud environment and consider
improving their processes, if relevant.
Lastly, they need to be ready to provide
historical data for migration into the new
platform."
Fresno went to its city attorney's
office to discuss issues related to a switch
from a server to a cloud system. With
all of the background the supplier had
with government entities and how they
handled their backups, this gave leaders
assurance they would be OK switching to
the new system, Garza-Perry said.
"If I'm working from home, I don't
have to VPN into my system here," she
said. "I can log in and not have that VPN
dely."
Fresno switch to web-based in April
and Garza-Perry said it has been a very
smooth rollout of the system, with only
a few minor issues. The look and data
entry operations are a little bit different
than the old system, but she said there has
been no major issues.
Thomas said John Wayne opted
for a cloud-based system, taking them
off internal servers as it offered more
f lexibility. The internal server also
provided endless connection issues.
"Going to a cloud-based system, we've
not had any of those problems," she said.
"We have enough firewalls and other
protections that I think we're good."
"The people who work for them,
they're the line workers," he said.
"They're the people who cut the checks,
receive the invoices and hear the tenant
complaints."
Thomas said she knew most of the
needs for John Wayne before opting
for new software, but went to other
departments before creating a full goal
and need.
"Be inclusive in the planning process,"
she said. "If you intend more than one
working unit to use this system, then you
must involve the other user departments
in building the specifications. Otherwise
you're going to leave somebody out,
leave a piece missing and it's not going
to ultimately meet everyone's needs." 
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