Patrick Naef, head of Mercator and divisional senior vice president, Emirates Group IT.
Mercator’s Patrick Naef has been given a mandate to grow Emirates IT division over the next few years. Here’s how he plans to carry out that task.
How long does it take to implement a product like SkyChain?
Well, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. The first implementation that we carried out was when we developed the system for Emirates SkyCargo, which took two years. But now, it’s very much dependent on the processes of these customers as to how long it will take.
To give you one example, when we sold the system to Swiss World Cargo, they had a lot of very specific processes that they desperately wanted to have implemented in the system. As a result, we then spent around 5000 man-days of additional development on the system, so that project ran for approximately 14 months until everything was customised to their expectations and the system is now hosted in Switzerland in one of their outsourcing data centres.
Is it possible to have it implemented in a shorter time period?
Of course – another example would be Midex, based in Al Ain. They just took the system as it was, as they had only just started operating. They made the point that if it was good enough for Emirates SkyCargo, it was good enough for them. Within two weeks, the system was up and running.
Do a high number of existing legacy systems complicate the implementation process?
That’s certainly another factor that contributes to the length of time it takes. How many systems do we need to interface in? From revenue accounting to reservation systems - you name it - depending on complexity and interfaces the process can take much longer. The Midex case was particularly interesting because we have a stripped-down version of SkyChain that we offer to smaller, leaner carriers. We run the system in our data centre, so it’s a classical ASP model; we offer the service and provide everything in terms of hardware, hosting, communication.
It’s possible that we could provide that for larger customers, but it’s always dependent on what that client wants. The other model, which tends to be for larger clients, is doing all the maintenance and implementation of the system for them, and then they run the system in their own data centres or with their outsourcing partner and we are in charge of maintenance support.
When SkyChain goes live, is it a standalone system by that time, or is it operating with existing legacy systems?
It’s a bit of both – we replace a number of legacy systems, but there will still be a number of systems in place that we have to interface with. The initial project with Swiss World Cargo is over now, but we do have a number of follow-ups to make. For example, we’re currently updating the legacy systems for e-freight, and we’re also developing additional functionalties for SkyChain, which we’ll implement in a later phase to replace more legacy systems in the future.
Just to give you an example, when we went live with SkyChain for Emirates, we replaced 23 legacy systems, and since then we have replaced another three or four systems simply as a result of the additional functionalities in SkyChain. So we’ll probably be working on putting new solutions in for a long time to come.
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