Join Cornerstone and FareNexus as we present a new and fresh look at Airline Distribution And Contract Management. Our panel of experts break down the current issues, define the problem as it is today, and then spoke about what is being done to solve the situation.
Watch to find out what’s up and coming in this realm of travel automation solutions!
See our press release about our partnership here:
And visit nexusCMT’s website here:
Video Transcript
Lierin: (00:00)
Welcome everybody. For those of you just joining us, this is Cornerstone and Fairnexus, presenting together: New Takes and Fresh Solutions — Airline Distribution and Contract Management. I’m behind the scenes over here. I’m our marketing manager. My name is Lierin, and I will be introducing you to the ones that truly matter on this presentation. So let’s get into it.. So we got Mat Orrego, Cornerstone CEO and Rich Miller, the Senior Vice President of Business Development over at Fairnexus. These two gentlemen have been working real hard to bring together and iron out the solution that we’re going to be presenting today. And I know a lot of you probably have already met them and know them, met you at trade shows. I know a lot of current clients, so I’m just gonna let these two, take it away.
Mat: (00:48)
Good deal. Thank you Lierin. And, good to be here with all of you. Rich, good to be here with you as well. Welcome to our discussion today. And hopefully, it will be a discussion on an area that I think is super important: the management of airline contracts. I think over the years they’ve gotten very complex, you know, during the covid period certainly, and emerging out of the pandemic. We’re seeing a lot more contracts and a lot more complex contracts being implemented for carriers as they’re ramping up, as they want to refine their relationships, with their customers and their TMCs. And what we’ve looked at over the years, I mean, everyone pretty much knows, on this call, you know what Cornerstone does, but very much involved in the mid and back office processes of TMCs.
Mat: (01:53)
And one of the areas that we spend a lot of time on is around contracts and helping really process those contracts accurately so that they get issued correctly. So, when we started working and looking at, you know, how we could improve the process we decided to partner with a company called Fair Nexus and their platform Nexus cmt. So that’s what we’re here to announce today. I think you’ve seen some of the press that both the company dime and, the beat have, has spoken about our, our partnership here, but we wanted to get into more of the details, with, Cornerstone’s customers directly, and that’s the majority of our, of our audience today. So what we’ve done is we’ve integrated, the processing and the automated processing of contract management prior to ticketing, and the setup of proper ticketing and accurate ticketing for the optimization of contracts, both from a revenue perspective and from a corporate buyer corporate discount perspective. So, next slide please.
Mat: (03:06)
So, the areas that, you know, over the years, that we’ve mostly, you know, been focused on, is really the, the optimization, of the contract process itself and the application of it, you know, prior to ticketing, that’s really, really matters because you want to catch as much of that upfront. And so really it’s been about revenue and contract management and really trying to figure out how do we apply a contract accurately at the time of ticketing. And that’s not an easy thing because some of these contracts are super complex. And so how they’re analyzed and how they are applied and documented, prior to ticketing is super important because if you don’t do it right, you know, you run into these debit memos and you run into a lot of rework. And so it becomes really the missed opportunities.
Mat: (03:59)
There are both from a revenue perspective and you’re not getting the commissions that you due, and potentially it’s costing you if you don’t do it right either because you’re getting these debit memos that then have to be researched, they have to be refuted sometimes, sometimes, you know, you’re right about how you did things, but it’s a very arduous process. And so those are the problems that we’re trying to address through this. And ultimately it’s really a productivity issue for the agency. And that’s a big topic nowadays because with the constraint of labor and how busy everyone is. And the TMC community right now servicing customers and doing all this work you know, because of the environment that we’re in you want to make this process as streamlined as process. Next step, next slide. Thanks, Lieirin.
Mat: (04:48)
So, today’s challenges are really around the interpretation of the contracts, correctly, maximizing the opportunities, around the revenue management side of it, avoiding those miscalculations, of the contracts themselves to avoid those airline debit memos. and what we’re finding is that a lot of those transactions, even in spite of all the rules that are written within IQCX to manage that high percentage of those PNRs are being worked on manually. And that’s kind of a no-no. And we wanna avoid, you know that work because if we can automate as much of that on the front end, then it really makes for that seamless touchless transaction. The other thing that I think is super important, and especially for the folks within agencies that are looking at revenue and revenue management is some good reporting and business intelligence and analytics.
Mat: (05:45)
And part of our solution is there to offer some of the things that are emerging, you know, in the marketplace now, direct supplier, direct airline distribution, these NDC contracts, that in some cases are off, the GDS channel as we’re processing, those things need to also be considered itself as well too. Because those are potential contracts that have to be managed in similar ways. And how do we manage those in the process of handling NDC transactions? And part of the problem as well too is around the interfacing with the TMCs current and mid-office and reporting technology, those are challenges that comp companies are facing too, and especially around the analytics, you know, around revenue management how TMCs and even their corporate customers are managing those relationships with their customers. So the types of contracts that we’ll be managing are the public contracts, private fair contracts, net, net markup, as well as corporate contracts. Next slide please.
Mat: (07:00)
So this is in production today and we’re using an IQCX ticketing customer that’s using this today, the integration between the Fair Nexus, contract management tool and IQCX. And one of our customers is processing well over 400,000 transactions on an annual basis, about 35,000 on a monthly basis with about a 95.5%, almost 100%, touchless manner. Before that they were having to do a lot of arduous audits, catch some of these, missed opportunities, especially on the commission side of it, prior to, you know, prior to settlement or even after even after something settled, they could be able to go back, but they were able to do a lot of that, but it’s just required a lot of manual process to do that.
Mat: (07:54)
So what they’d essentially been able to do is achieved up to 80. Before they were probably at around 80 per to 90% touchless, and so they were able to bounce up into 15% to 20% elimination of that manual labor. So that’s pretty huge. I mean, when you think of this many transactions that are being processed and some of those dropping out of automation for this and then having to be manually worked, it’s quite a time saver, not to mention the fact that you’re optimizing your revenue, and managing your supplier contracts a lot better. So, it’s really a win-win all the way across to do this process and to integrate the process of contract management and the validation of that process prior to, prior to ticket and, and getting that done the right way the first time.
Mat: (08:51)
So let me me explain the way that it works. So now those of you familiar with IQCX know that we go into respective GDSs: Apollo, Amadeus, Sabre, what have you. We access that PNR typically out of the queue. And through the ResRuleprocess, we identify a contract that has been loaded into the nexusCMT tool, and then through the api, we go into the Nexus CMT tool in line through the, through the RESRULEprocess, access that contract, validate, that there is a commission available for that particular, you know, city pair, obviously airline and city pair, classes of service, whatever that might be that are the relevant parameters that are gonna drive the, the, the commission and the optimal commission. Then the tool returns back to IQCX, within the RESRULEprocess, the necessary documentation that needs to get updated to the PNR itself.
Mat: (10:07)
Uh, and then what, IQCX does is it automates the entry of all that information into the PNR and then passes it off into ticketing or whatever the next step in the workflow process, is. So pretty straightforward, all of this being done in line as part of your quality control file finishing process, itself. So the result is, again, maximizing the time, creating that initial transaction the right way, the first time, and increasing that productivity that you’re going to get because you don’t have to revisit that transaction again to make sure it was done correctly or have that done by people, in any way. So everything’s staying within an automation process. Next slide. Cool. So now Rich is gonna jump in here and give you a little bit more details on how all of this works.
Rich: (11:06)
Mm-hmm. . Sure. Thanks. Thanks, Matt. just a little bit more background on, on on the contract management tool for the Fair Nexus offers, and, and we’re working with, Cornerstone on the integration here that Matt described. today we’re, we have contracts basically from probably around a hundred airlines with all kinds of variations off those contracts, with those airlines. and the tool itself is very, very robust. I’ll just say right now that there’s not a contract so far that we have run into, we, we can’t handle and, and, and load into the tool and have it work, work its magic, so to speak out there. It’s extremely robust, but we’re running thousands of PNRs per day, through the system with, representing a, a tremendous, you know, over half a billion dollars in airline spend. We’re handling, as I said, it’s the most complicated contracts, and have that, that have all kinds of nuances and everything as, as we load those in.
Rich: (12:06)
And, and it still continues to, to be able to run at about a 99.2% touchless rate across the board. we’re working, and one of the things here that I think is, is really a benefit and why, we’ve, we’ve partnered with, with the Cornerstone team is that in today’s world out there, there’s a lot of different technologies that are available to TMCs and typically the tmc, you know, somebody within the TMC has to be the coordinator of getting ev all of that technology to work in an integrated way. we decided that, that the, the best thing for and, and working here was to work with, Matt and the Cornerstone team to basically work as two technology companies and come up with a really the most efficient integration. And, and candidly, that’s gonna be an app that is an API integration that we’re, we’re working, with them on and make, do all the work ahead of time so that from a customer standpoint, a TMC standpoint, it becomes almost a turnkey, implementation.
Rich: (13:14)
It makes it easy. no one has to coordinate it. We’ve already done all the work together to make it an extremely tight and efficient integration through that process. So, and we’re working, Matt, Matt touched on it there, but we’re also now working on, CMT will handle n c contr contracts and, and everything that’s gonna go into those. and they’re just beginning to kind of show up in the marketplace, but they are gonna be even more complicated. They have the potential to be even more complicated. And so we’re, we’re working with, the I Q CX team to, to include that and make sure the right data and everything that’s required from, from TMC standpoint and a corporate customer standpoint on what they will want back and need, for, from NDC contracts. So, we’re, we’re out in front of that. I don’t know of any other, in the marketplace we keep hearing that there’s really not any other contract management tools kind of working on that NDC side. so we’re, we feel like we’re ourselves and Cornerstone are out in front on this, is it grows and gets traction. So, next slide there.
Rich: (14:25)
Um, basically the, the, the prospect flow for, for, to get started, once we, we get everything is we, we, we take your contracts and get copies of those, we kind of evaluate and do it once over, we have a, we have a team that’s, that specializes in doing nothing but loading contracts. So they have become very familiar with what to look for, what, nuances are in there that they need to look for, and that we evaluate. We, we load the contracts into the, the, the tool. it says, you know, it takes anywhere from the simple ones take, you know, go very quickly, maybe an hour, but the more complicated it’s gonna take up to 10 to 12 hours. I mean, on average, we find that it takes about four to five hours to load a contract. then we have a process, a certification process where we, we put it into kind of a, a and, and, and work with, you to make sure that we’re reading the everything correctly.
Rich: (15:21)
Um, and in this process, we’ve actually found in some cases where our customers were worked, interpreting the contracts correctly. So there’s some, some, learnings that go into this whole, that part of the process. But there’s a certification process, that, that we, everything is, validated and verified, and then we basically turn, turn the system on and, begin to run the, the PS through, and we continue to look, at them. We, track any, any exceptions that anything that kicks out and, and do, analyze, we analyze why they were kicked out and make any changes in tweaking. So our goal is really to get a hundred percent of all these contracts going through the system without, anyone needing to touch them. So, next slide.
Rich: (16:11)
Um, some of the key features, I’ve touched on already, but you can see they’re really, it’s pretty quick and easy to, to, to load and manage the contracts from a system standpoint. we can handle and process, all, all kinds of contracts from, that, that bolt, kind of a tactical approach to them, discounts, those kinds of things. And, and the testing environment that I was talking about earlier is we got, we have a pre-production and a production environment. So it’s a, it’s a, a foolproof system that, we get all the contracts, loaded properly. They, there is, we have a, we have the ability to, and we track when any changes were made and who made them and who updates. So that there is, there’s a, a, a, a record of, of all of those things that are done and, and, and that, and, and only certain, you know, there’s a whole validation process or verification process of who can, who can make changes in, in those kinds of things.
Rich: (17:08)
Um, we, we are developing a nexusCMT library for all the contracts so that we can kind of compare contracts coming in, and we’re again, building our knowledge base. This team that specializes in loading them, continues to build their knowledge and, and, and, and verifies that, all of the, all of those contracts are being loaded properly and not misinterpreted in anything like that. the other thing is, is that C M T can handle, multiple price, price quotes and, and, and commissions within a p and r so that if there’s, if somebody goes out on one airline and comes back on another airline or there’re multiple segments and, and there’s different commission opportunities on that, it, it, it calculates all of that, as it go, goes through the process. And, we do work on all the major GDSs and we do have, some direct airline connections that through for the N D C that we’re working with and, and that, we do have the, ability for the agent to, see the commissions for ET at on the, as they work, after they make the booking to see what the commissions are available on, on that booking, if that’s required.
Rich: (18:20)
We have an app that would, come up on, the, agent screen for both Travel Port and Saber, and we’re in, the press develop developing it for Amadeus, but we do have it available today for Travel Board and Saber. and there’s a reporting dashboard. There’s all kinds of information that, we provide. And, and, I’ll show you a slide on that and you want go, we’ll go to the next slide. but it’s a very sophisticated, this, this slide just basically is just a, a, to show you kind of what all the categories and how, for cmt, and this is more of an admin, that look of, of what’s available. You know, CMT can break everything down by, agency contracts, client contracts, and, and point of sale, multiple point of sales, and, be because Fair Nexus, has, is, is was developed in as headquartered in Canada.
Rich: (19:15)
They’ve done, we’ve done all the work for all the tax groups and everything for Canada. So those all apply, knows how to calculate all that, those kinds of things. Has, it rules history, if there are in the contracts, if there’s different con commissions for various regions out in the, across, in, in on global basis, you can group, we can group all of that together. again, it’s a, it’s a very, very robust tool, that, as, as I said earlier, there hasn’t been any contracts we’ve seen that we can’t handle. I know then in some cases out there in the marketplace, there are some contracts that, you know, some tools can’t handle. And, and those all have to be looked at manually, those kinds of things. And, we’re able to, to, to handle all, all, all of, a, any type of contract at this point. we’ll go to the next slide.
Rich: (20:10)
This has, a, a quick snapshot of some of the, of the, of the dashboard, that appears, we can go, you know, we, make this available. we’re also working to put, to make this information and, and, and into the, iBank reporting system that Cornerstone has. So those of you who are taking advantage of that would have, there’d be a link to put up this information and, and into, into that reporting system also. So, but you, you can see it, it gives daily, booking trends, commission trends, faring, how much on each each, p and r, what was the, commission earned, those kinds of things. It’s a, again, it’s a very user-friendly and, a great dashboard that, we’re getting very positive feedback on, from our, that we we’re making available to our customers. So, so those are, that’s kind of a, a quick overview on snapshot of what, what CMT is, how it works, or how you get started, what needs to be done, and then, some of the information’s provided, after we, after, after we turn it on. So, I think we’re, you wanna go to the next slide? I think it’s, yeah. Do we have any questions or anything? Larry? We’ll kind of pause here. We’ve covered
Mat: (21:26)
A lot. Open it up to the audience for questions. Lierin do we have questions coming in?
Lierin: (21:31)
Yeah, I’ve got a few questions and everyone, I know I didn’t mention it at the beginning, but go ahead and I’ve sent a message out via the chat — so if you’ve got any questions, go ahead and send them our way. They’ll be addressed not at the end, but now, so do, let’s see: “Do I have to have IQCX to be implemented with nexusCMT?” That’s the first question.
Mat: (21:59)
Um, no, not necessarily. I mean, you can, you can certainly use the, the, the workflow, of, nexus, CMT with I, you know, with, with IQCX, separately, but we’re, we’re thinking really of it from, you know, a true end-to-end process where we’re, we’re taking a, a reservation through that, you know, kind of traditional quality control and file finishing process, the validation of, you know, of supplier contracts, airlines in this case, and, and then pushing it through to, to ticketing. But, you know, yeah, there’s a lot of technologies out there. Some customers have developed some of their own. so yes, very willing to, you know, to do a hybrid model, but really designed as a, as a true end-to-end process through the fulfillment, of ticketing and reissues and all of those things that we, that we validate.
Lierin: (22:57)
I’ve got another question here: “It just has global contracts? and Apollo?”
Rich: (23:06)
local contracts?
Lierin: (23:07)
Global, sorry, global, global
Rich: (23:09)
Contracts? Yes. CMT can handle global contracts. Absolutely. and, and Apollo, it doesn’t work on Apollo. we’re, matter of fact, that’s, it, we, we have not done the work to be very candid on for, Worldspan at this point, but, we’ve got Apollo and Galileo, it can work on both of those.
Mat: (23:35)
Right. And then we have that, that big, big migration going on within the travel port family of, of GDSs, and they’re all moving to, to travel Port Plus. So we’re definitely going to be consolidating all of that into the, travel port API and interactions there. But yes, generally speaking, almost all the GDSs today.
Lierin: (24:01)
Excellent. We had a few more questions just come in. so on this one says: “I’m assuming there will be an additional cost, and will you be sending out a copy of your PowerPoint deck?” I can confirm the PowerPoint deck will be sent out.
Mat: (24:20)
Yeah, so, you know, right now we’re, we’re implementing with, with a, a handful of customers and, and working through all of that, process. So working out and refining, you know, the process well here, but essentially it’s, it’s, it’s pretty, it, it’s pretty straightforward. Maybe, maybe, you know, maybe the next slide makes sense to, to look at, Lierin as to answer some of these questions about what we’re doing. So for Cornerstone customers, you know, the thing to do is, is to contact, the account manager and, and we’re we’ll set up more of a live demo and, and discussion with you to, to get more into the particulars of, you know, of your, you know, interest and, and potential use, of this integration if you’re an IQCX customer. It makes a ton of sense.
Mat: (25:12)
So, but the implementation process is, is pretty straightforward. I mean from a cost perspective, it’s around $200 a contract to load that up and maintain that. Unless there’s some huge anomalies in the contract itself are typically, isn’t, but, you know, initially you can look at, you know, loading all of your contracts in for $200 per contract. And then, you know, so sort of our price for this and looking at the marketplace is about, 40 cents, a transaction per validated, reservation through, the CMT tool. Now for Cornerstone customers, we’re gonna put an extra special pricing for all of you. but you’re gonna have to contact our account manager and, and we’ll be able to talk about that, directly. But, the process of implementation, the meeting, depending if it’s, you know, just a couple of contracts and pretty, pretty straightforward, and, and then creating those kind of simple hooks into, into the ResRuleprocess that validates, to check a contract against CMT, you can be up and processing within 14 to 60 days, depending on the complexity of the contracts that you’re trying to manage.
Mat: (26:39)
Rich, do you wanna add anything to that?
Rich: (26:40)
Well, no, the, the only thing I would, yeah, the only thing, thing I would add is the, on the loading of the contracts, it is, approximately $200 a contract, but that includes any ongoing changes, things like that in the future. So if they, if there’s a change made on an annual basis or any you renegotiate any, any, kind of tweak to that contract that exists, that’s all included. So it’s like a one time charge. the only time you we charge that is if it’s a brand new contract you’re loading. So, and yeah, and other than that, no, I, you, you’ve got it right. I mean, we’re, we’re, working closely with, with the Cornerstone to make this, this implementation and deployment as, as quick and as easy as possible, so you can get started getting the, the, the savings and the, and the productivity saves and those kinds of things. So,
Mat: (27:29)
Yep. And, and from a contracting and commercial perspective, you know, all, all the commercials are, are handled under cornerstones, current contract structures and which is, you know, do another schedule to it. And, and you’re up and running
Lierin: (27:46)
Next question says, “We’re in the process of upgrading to Travelport Plus or Galileo, when we change in the first quarter next year, is this an option that can be selected when we upgrade the GDS?”
Mat: (28:00)
Sure,
Rich: (28:01)
Yep.
Mat: (28:02)
I don’t see any reason for that.
Rich: (28:05)
I don’t, I don’t either. No, it should be.
Mat: (28:07)
I mean we do wanna have discussions with folks, you know as soon as possible, yeah, just to get their feedback, understand, you know, explain a little bit more the details, you know, of, of how this is done. But, you know, just begin the, the, the, the planning process, if nothing else, to get you, on the schedule, even if you’re having to do some other things beforehand, like migrate to another G D S or Travel Port Plus. if you’re interested in this, we, we certainly want to know, what your schedule is and, and how we can plan accordingly and, and, and fit you in when you wanna get implemented.
Lierin: (28:47)
Awesome. “So with global contracts, how is the OB fees and or other additional taxes in regions such as LAM and APAC work?”
Rich: (28:59)
That they basically, it’s similar in a very similar fashion to what we do with, with the Canadian taxes and those kinds of things? I think that the, the best thing would be to really, so I make sure that I don’t mislead anybody here or, or misunderstand it is to, is to, to contact the, the, the Cornerstone account manager. Let, let’s engage ’em exactly what your, you know, concerns and questions are in that area, and we can show you how CMT would handle that and, and what you would get back and, and everything on that. So, but, but again, we’re, we’re, we’re handling contracts outside of North America currently, so, I, I, we sh you know, we, we weren’t happy to, to work through with, the Cornerstone, account team to, to show you that and, and, and answer your question specifically about
Mat: (29:49)
That. So, yeah.
Lierin: (29:50)
Excellent. “Can reporting information be exported or only available via iBank link?”
Mat: (29:58)
We’ll make the data available. And good time to announce is, you know, as Cornerstone’s rolling out, a new user experience and especially around both iQCX and iBank. you know, one of the cornerstones, if you will, of that new design and that new user experience is not only going to be the ability to, to look at your data, but also be able to pull it out and, and export it and import it into whatever tools you have internally for your analysis or other reporting that you might have.
Lierin: (30:36)
“Will CMT notify when an airline contract has expired?”
Rich: (30:43)
Yes. The shared answer to that, yes. We keep track of that, and there is an alert system that goes out, yes.
Lierin: (30:48)
“How does Fairnexus gauge accuracy in the contracts applied? What happens if a client gets a debit memo after the commission is applied?”
Rich: (31:00)
Um, well, that’s the, that’s the beauty and the value of the, the whole certification process we go through as we’re loading the contracts and, and getting them in place. we, we go through that and, and, and work with the, the tmc or the appropriate person in the TMC to make sure that it’s, it’s, we’re, we’re validating that we’re reading those contracts correctly and calculating everything correctly. And, that’s why the, there’s, there’s really a dramatic decrease in the, in the amount of debit memos that come through. It’s just a, it’s a very, it sounds, it sounds tedious, but at the end of the day, it’s not really, we, we run a number of PNRs through on a test basis upfront and really work with the T M C to, to make sure that, we’re answering any questions and, and interpreting those contracts correctly. So,
Mat: (31:51)
Right. And, and we’ll be there to support any research that needs to be done or any detail that needs to be provided as far as refuting a debit memo.
Lierin: (32:05)
Next question says: “When you say there is a transaction per validated pnr, could we, for example, only send international PNRs through, or would we have to send, or would all PNRs have to go through?”
Mat: (32:18)
No, not all PNRs have to go through. you can, you can be selective via the, resol process, which ones will trigger the api, interactions with the tool. So if you want to say, well, everyone knows how resoles work, you can pretty much do anything with ’em as far as, you know, filtering and, and conditioning as to what things that you want to, to do with, with a p and r and, and in this case, how you want to interact with the tool.
Lierin: (32:50)
Next one says, “To confirm: we would need to have each customer’s airline agreements loaded in addition to our agency contracts for each airline?”
Rich: (33:01)
Yeah. Yeah. I think you’re, I think they’re asking about corporate contracts for their customers. Yeah, you would, we would need to load those contracts, so that we can do the proper interpretation on it. Yes.
Mat: (33:12)
Yep.
Lierin: (33:14)
“It says the airline contracts are mostly extended to the next year. Will any extensions be another $200? and thank you!”
Rich: (33:23)
No. That’s what I, what I was trying to make was, is basically it’s a, it’s a one time, loading fee, and if they extend and nothing changes, there’s, they just keep, it just keeps going forward. If there’s a, a minor tweak to that, that’s all included in the one time we go back and make those tweaks without any additional charge. It was a, just a flat one time fee.
Lierin: (33:45)
Okay. Two more questions. If anyone has any questions, go ahead and send them our way. second to last one asks: “Is there any type of stand behind if a DM or debit memo comes in from the tool?”
Rich: (34:01)
From the tool standpoint that the – at the end of the day – the demo memos responsibility is with the TMC. That’s why the, we do the, the certification process at the beginning and go through all of that to make sure it’s correct. if there are demo memos that come through, which we, we haven’t experienced very many with our customers, I’ll be candid with you, but if one does come through, we we’re, we’re validating and or understanding if there was something that the tool misread and we make that, that correction of that change. But, the, the numbers of demo memos that are coming through, after, C M T is, is implemented and deployed as is minimal, like up to this point with our customers. So,
Lierin: (34:49)
Well, I apologize to the asker for saving this one to last, but it seems like a really good transition: “Is it ready for TMCs to sign up and schedule implementation?”
Mat: (35:04)
We are ready. We’re wrapping up our final beta, processes into the API process. We started initially working through with agencies on a queue-based process, and now we’re into the API integration between IQCX and the CMT tool. So, we were bouncing between queues, and, and the Farenexus CMT tool was working that in a separate queue. And so we really wanted to refine that, that process. So we’re still working through that and, and completing, you know, the development and the testing around that. but it, it’s essentially, you know, in production, but going through its next, version of it that really tightens up that entire process via, via the api, integration. So, pretty much ready to begin the discussions here, in, in q, you know, in Q4 and, and looking at scheduling implementations, mid q1, to begin looking at that. Typically these decision processes are 60 to 90 days, you know, processes often. So yes. But we’re ready to get started, for those that, you know, that are interested in, in, in starting the discussion and, and contracting process.
Lierin: (36:32)
Well, we’ve had one other question come in here, asking: “will the agents themselves be able to see the commissions?”
Mat: (36:39)
Ah, great question, rich, I’ll let you hand.
Rich: (36:41)
Yeah, sure. The, the agents, we do have, as I, we do have an app that would open up on the agent’s, desktop for, travel Port and for Saber where, so that the agent, when they finish the, the making, the decision and booking, could open right up and see what the commissions was, that were being earned and everything off of that booking. So the, yes, the short answer is yes, that that can be done. we are in development with, to do an Amadeus app, but today we are, and by the time we get everything implemented, we got the API implementation or integration here with, with Cornerstone, both travel board and, Saber’s app exists. And we, and, and it would be available for the agents, yes.
Lierin: (37:33)
And another question asking: “this process would not be table driven in IQCX, correct?”
Mat: (37:41)
Correct.
Lierin: (37:45)
All right. Well, those are all the questions that we’ve received so far. Looks like we are five minutes ahead of time about, is there anything else you guys wanna end with saying?
Rich: (38:01)
No, I’m good. We’re very anxious to begin to work with more cornerstone customers. As Mat said, we’ve worked with a couple here and we’re anxious to work with the cornerstone team, to have customers take advantage of everything that the CMT can bring to them, and the tight integration with the API integration we’re developing with Cornerstone.
Mat: (38:26)
Yep, same here. We’re really looking forward to taking this tool out to the marketplace and having our customers interact with it. So thank you everyone for joining us. I think we certainly know who attended this, and so I’m sure our account managers will be contacting you, but please reach out if you want. Absolutely can get something started sooner. Thank you.