Tool for analyzing corporate airline bids

• US 7,401,029 B2
• Filed: 02/16/2001
• Issued: 07/15/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 02/16/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Concur Technologies Incorporated (SAP SE)
• Original Assignee: TRX, Inc. (SAP SE)
• Inventors: Gillespie, Scott
• Primary Examiner(s): Weiss; John
• Assistant Examiner(s): Meyers; Matthew S
• Application Number:
  US09/784,836
• Publication Number:
  US 20010034626A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,706 Days
• Field of Search: 705/1, 705/13, 705/5
• US Class Current: 705/6
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/02 Reservations, e.g. for tickets, services or events
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/025 Coordination of plural reservations, e.g. plural trip segments, transportation combined with accommodation
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/0637 Strategic management or analysis, e.g. setting a goal or target of an organisation; Planning actions based on goals; Analysis or evaluation of effectiveness of goals
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0283 Price estimation or determination
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0629 for generating comparisons
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/04 Trading; Exchange, e.g. stocks, commodities, derivatives or currency exchange

Abstract

A airline travel supplier evaluation tool is provided which will allow companies to efficiently evaluate the value of preferred airline supplier scenarios and improve their negotiating position vis-à-vis their airline suppliers. The user of the software tool may choose which, if any, preferred supplier set is best given the user'"'"'s preferences for such criteria including but not limited to saving money and/or saving travel time.

Claims

1. An airline travel supplier evaluation system for analyzing airline flight information in relation to one or more predefined city pairs for a given airline customer, comprising:

a source of airline schedule data from a plurality of airlines for a plurality of city pairs;

a memory space for storing the airline schedule data and the city pairs;

an airline fair marketshare module that accesses the airline schedule data and the city pairs and calculates an incremental travel time for each flight record serving a given city pair in relation to the fastest flight serving the given city pair, the airline fair market share module determines a market share for each airline in relation to a given city pair over a period of time and adjusts the market share for each airline based on the incremental travel time associated with flight records serving the given city pair, thereby determining a fair market share for each airline in relation to a given city pair.

2. The airline travel supplier evaluation system of claim 1 wherein the airline fair marketshare module computes an elapsed time for each flight record serving a given city pair using the flight schedule data, identifies a baseline flight record, the baseline flight record having the shortest elapsed travel time from amongst the flight records serving the given city pair;

and computes the incremental travel time for each flight record serving the given city pair, where the incremental travel time is the difference between the elapsed travel time of a given flight record and the elapsed travel time for the baseline flight record.

3. The airline travel supplier evaluation system of claim 1 wherein the airline schedule data further includes aircraft type data for each flight record serving the predefined city pairs, and where the fair market share for a given airline is based on the frequency of operations in the flight records associated with given airline, the aircraft type for each flight record associated with given airline, and the incremental travel time for each flight record associated with the given airline.

4. The airline travel supplier evaluation system of claim 1 further comprises a scenario marketshare module that receives non-schedule based factors and adjusts the fair market share for a given airline based on the non-schedule based factors to determine scenario market share data for each airline in relation to the predefined city pairs, wherein the non-schedule based factors is at least one of a travel policy factor, the travel policy factor being indicative of the airline customer'"'"'s ability to shift travelers towards or away from any given airline, a sales level factor, the sales level factor being indicative of an airline'"'"'s ability to attract the travelers of the given airline customer to the airline, a supplier status indicative of an airline customer'"'"'s preference to have its travelers use the airline is assigned to one or more of the plurality of airlines, or a sales level-supplier status factor is based on the supplier status and a corresponding sales level factor.

5. The airline travel supplier evaluation system of claim 1 further comprising a source of projected airline travel data over a predefined time period for the given airline customer;

a source of airline purchase data; and

an expense-based cost module that accesses the projected airline travel data and the airline purchase data, and determines expected travel expense data for the given airline customer based on the scenario market share data.

6. The airline travel supplier evaluation system of claim 5 further comprising a source of pricing data relating to an agreement between the given airline customer and at least one airline, wherein the expense-based cost module determines expected travel expense data based in part on the pricing data.

7. The airline travel supplier evaluation system of claim 1 further comprising a source of projected airline travel data over a predefined time period for the given airline customer;

and a time-based cost module that accesses the projected airline travel data, the airline schedule data and the scenario market share data; and

determines expected travel time for the given airline customer based on the scenario market share data, the time-based cost module further receive a value for a traveler'"'"'s time and determines expected travel time cost data based on the traveler'"'"'s time value data and the expected travel time for the given airline customer.

8. A computer-implemented method for determining a fair market share for a given airline in relation to a given city pair, comprising:

providing airline schedule data for each flight serving the given city pair, the airline schedule data including aircraft type data;

determining an incremental travel time for each flight serving the city pair using the airline schedule data;

determining a market share for a given airline in relation to the given city pair over a period of time; and

adjusting the market share for the given airline by executing a software-implemented application on a computing device and based on the frequency of flights serving the given city for the given airline, the aircraft type for each flight associated with the given airline, and the incremental travel time of each flight associated with the given airline.

9. The computer-implemented method of claim 8 wherein the airline schedule data further defined as a plurality of flight records for the given city pair, such that each flight record is indicative of one or more flights that serve the given city pair and include a record identifier, an airline identifier, a frequency of the flights over a predefined time period, and detail flight schedule data for each flight comprising the flight record.

10. The computer-implemented method of claim 9 wherein the step of determining incremental travel time further comprises the steps of:

computing an elapsed travel time for each flight record;

identifying a baseline flight record, the baseline flight record having the shortest elapsed travel time from amongst the flight records serving the given city pair; and

computing an incremental travel time for each flight record, where the incremental travel time is the difference between the elapsed travel time of a given flight record and the elapsed travel time for the baseline flight record.

11. The computer-implemented method of claim 10 wherein the step of adjusting a market share further comprises the steps of:

determining an aircraft type weighting factor for each flight record;

determining an incremental travel time weighting factor for each flight record;

determining a pull value for each flight record, where the pull value is computed by multiplying the frequency associated with the flight record with the aircraft type weighting factor and with the incremental travel time weighting factor; and

determining a ratio between a sum of the pull values for each of the flight records associated with the given airline and a total sum of the pull values for the plurality of flight records, thereby yielding the fair market share for the given airline.

12. A computer-implemented method for determining a fair market share for a given airline in relation to a given city pair, comprising:

providing airline schedule data for a plurality of airlines, the airline schedule data including a set of flights which correspond to the given city pair and each flight having an elapsed travel time;

identifying a baseline flight, the baseline flight having the shortest elapsed travel time from amongst the set of flights;

computing an incremental travel time for each flight in the set of flights, where the incremental travel time is the difference between the elapsed travel time of a flight and the elapsed travel time for the baseline flight;

determining a market share for a given airline from the plurality of airlines in relation to the given city pair over a period of time; and

adjusting the market share for the given airline based in part on the incremental travel time of each flight associated with the given airline by executing a software-implemented application on a computing device.

13. The computer-implemented method of claim 12 wherein the set of flights are grouped into a plurality of flight records, such that each flight record is indicative of one or more flights that serve the given city pair and include a record identifier, an airline identifier, a frequency of the flights over a predefined time period, and detail flight schedule data for each flight comprising the flight record.

14. The computer-implemented method of claim 13 wherein the step of determining a fair market share further comprises the steps of:

determining an aircraft type weighting factor for each flight record;

determining an incremental travel time weighting factor for each flight record;

determining a pull value for each flight record, where the pull value is computed by multiplying the frequency associated with the flight record with the aircraft type weighting factor and with the incremental travel time weighting factor; and

determining a ratio between a sum of the pull values for each of the flight records associated with the given airline and a total sum of the pull values for the plurality of flight records, thereby yielding the fair market share for the given airline.

15. A computer-implemented method for determining a scenario market share for a given city pair for a given airline selected from a plurality of airlines, comprising:

determining a market share for the given airline in relation to the given city pair over a given period of time, such that the market share is based on schedule-based factors associated with the flights serving the given city pair;

determining a travel policy factor for a given airline customer, the travel policy factor being indicative of the given airline customer'"'"'s ability to shift travelers towards or away from any given airline; and

adjusting the market share for the given airline based on the travel policy factor and by executing a software-implemented application on a computing device.

16. The computer-implemented method of claim 15 further comprises the steps of:

determining a second travel policy factor for the given airline customer; and

deriving the scenario market share for the given airline in relation to the given city pair from the fair market share for the given airline in part based on the second travel policy factor.

17. The computer-implemented method of claim 15 further comprising the step of determining a sales level factor for one or more of the plurality of airlines, the sales level factor being indicative of an airline'"'"'s ability to attract the travelers of an airline customer to the airline, such that the scenario market share for the given airline is in part based on the sales level factor associated with the given airline.

18. The computer-implemented method of claim 16 further comprising the steps of:

assigning a supplier status for one or more of the plurality of airlines, the supplier status being indicative of an airline customer'"'"'s preference of having its travelers use the airline; and

determining a sales level-supplier status factor for the given airline, where the sales level-supplier status factor is based on the supplier status and the corresponding sales level factor for the given airlines, such that the scenario market share for the given airline is in part based on the sales level-supplier status factor associated with the given airline.

19. A computer-implemented method for determining a scenario market share for a given airline selected from a plurality of airlines, comprising:

determining a market share for the given airline in relation to a given city pair over a period of time, such that the market share is based on schedule-based factors associated with the flights serving the given city pair;

determining a sales level factor for one or more of the plurality of airlines, the sales level factor being indicative of an airline'"'"'s ability to shift the travelers of an airline customer to the airline; and

adjusting the market share for the given airline based on the sales level factor associated with the given airline and by executing a software-implemented application on a computing device.

20. The computer-implemented method of claim 19 further comprising the steps of:

determining a second sales level factor for each of the plurality of airlines; and

determining the scenario market share for the given airline by adjusting the fair market share for the given airline in part based on the second sales level factor associated with the given airline.

21. The computer-implemented method of claim 19 further comprising the steps of:

assigning a supplier status for each of the plurality of airlines, the supplier status being indicative of an airline customer'"'"'s preference of having its travelers use the airline;

determining a sales level-supplier status factor for the given airline, where the sales level-supplier status factor is based on the supplier status and the corresponding sales level factor for the given airline; and

deriving the scenario market share for the given airline from the fair market share for the given airline in part based on the sales level-supplier status factor associated with the given airline.

22. The computer-implemented method of claim 19 further comprising the step of determining a travel policy factor for a given airline customer, the travel policy factor being indicative of an airline customer'"'"'s ability to shift travelers towards or away from any given airline, where the scenario market share for the given airline is in part based on the travel policy factor.