Nitty-gritty of Revenue ManagementRevenue management first noticed and accepted by the airline industry. Many travel and hospitality companies have been focused to the “adapt or perish” hymn while moving towards revenue management. Today, revenue management processes and systems are implemented in number of industries, including manufacturing, advertising, energy, hi-tech, telecommunications, car rental, cruise line, railroad and retail. In the future, companies that ignore revenue management will be at a serious disadvantage.Actually, revenue management is the concept of adopting the number of implementation of emerging and changing business strategy to revenue management, where you can generate additional revenue from 3% to 8 % and it resulting in possible profit increment of 50% to 100%.Revenue Management is the application of exercised strategy that estimates consumer behavior at the micromarket level and make the most of product availability and price to maximize revenue growth. Revenue Management is about optimizes revenue from offered business.Revenue Management is a solid management science that utilizes statistical and mathematical concepts, based on operations research and management science methodology and tools in changing marketing environment to provide information to:. Precisely review prospecting consumer behavior under dynamically changing market environment
. Establish the most effective way to price and assign inventory to reach and every prospecting consumer, each and every day, formulate real-time modification as market conditions change, with the consumer in real-time
. Convey this information immediately to distribution and sale outlets which deal with the consumer in real-time
. Work as a decision-support reserve for marketing and operational purpose, containing but not restricted to: pricing, product development, advertising, sales, scheduling, distribution, human resource utilization and capacity planning.Businesses worldwide are going under remarkable pressure by having giant capital investments occupied to their capacity/resources up to bottom line and to optimizing and recovered revenues from their fragile capacity, products and/or services. So, what can be done to execute RM effectively is very important.How to reduce the execution pains and optimize the benefits?In fast changing supply and demand circumstances, how do you handle your resources and price your products and services? The challenges are find out the following:. How do you predict requirement for distinct products and services?. How do you assign and set aside the capacity/resources for high revenue/profit customers and products?. How do you optimize capacity employing as well as revenue realization?. How do you rework capacity/resource allocations set up on demand on a customary basis to optimize revenues?. How do you maximize overbooking to lessen service failures costs?. How do you distinguish product arrangement to maximize revenues?. How do you chase surplus capacity and propose discounts at the right time to speed up demand without mitigate revenues.. At what time you change capacity/resources to compete long-term supply and demand?Adopting the right method of revenue managementFrom a CEO’s point of view, revenue management is serious as it allows companies to successfully direct the challenges of supply, demand and other issues. Revenue management is a course of action and method brings in to order a company, provides it a strategic benefit over the competition by allows the company to sell the “right product to the right customer, at the right price, at the right time.” Revenue management strategies stable the tradeoffs amid revenues, capacity utilization and service failures. Revenue management has been shown in many purposes to offer strategic, competitive and financial rewards.Revenue management systems and processes can provide marvelous strategic return. By implementing revenue management systems and processes, American Airlines observed more than a billion dollars in incremental annual revenues after airline deregulation.Though RM concept is very simple but execution of revenue management systems has kept very difficult. The availability of current RM system are either in-house or vendor-related and are very costly and time intensive to put into practice and very complex to use in which they upset the processes and people during and after execution.Unluckily, revenue management execution and applicability have not been focused appropriately and stay behind with two of the biggest obstruction for companies to entirely assign to and profit from such systems. Many users of current systems have objection about the “black box” method used in applying compound revenue management prediction and maximization models. There are many revenue management models available like hybrid class of revenue management, advanced pros revenue management system, Navitaire’s Revenue Management System, Portal’s Revenue Management System etc to achieve the additional revenue and are vary depending upon the industry in which it is applied. Before implementing a revenue management system any organization must study whether the methods can be useful in their business and the necessity in which, it can push further to develop.Reducing the Execution PainSo how do you reduce the pain related with revenue management execution and applicability? Here are some implications:Open Systems (Internet, Intranet or LAN client/server platform): Companies should force collectively made to order Internet / Wireless application standards, protocols and platforms. By applying software and using open standards investment in IT infrastructure, it can be maintained and comprehended for long periods of time. Revenue management software should harmonize a company’s accessible investment in the infrastructure. By leveraging accessible software/hardware/networking infrastructure, companies can reducing the cost of execution and prevent training or failure costs.Framework flexibility: Components-based and completely integrated revenue management software solutions should be chosen and it should available with existing database and Web/application servers of software built on a flexible framework and can be easily integrated. To apply revenue management systems it should avoid monolithic proprietary systems that propose very little flexibility for ad-hoc decision support or future improvement and software that does not combine with the bequest systems well.Execution of Phase: Revenue management includes composite estimation and maximization models. When executing such systems today, benefits cannot be completely grasped until all models are entirely incorporated. This could get cost of millions of dollars and more time. Companies should evade ideas that need two to three years and multi-million dollars. A phased approach that gives entry to essential revenue management metrics should be adopted. Although optimization models will be required to maximize supply and demand or maximize resource allotment, the real emphasis in first phase should be to make out and collect the precise data, obtain users comfortable with RM metrics, and apply and make small adjustment of forecasting models until adequate historical data is pull together. This will reducing predicting fault and set up self-assurance in predicting models to lead better RM applicability. Maximizing models should be executing in second phase or soon after. Revenue management systems and processes should address business problems and give activity that generates a path for maximization twelve months after implementing first phase.Front-End Platform (as opposed to back-end transaction processing platform): In general extremely automated and closely integrated with reservation or transaction systems of companies executes revenue management system at a large. The systems are operating in the back-end and compel extremely practiced analysts to control and manage this method. An easy to use front-end to the compound revenue
management system can develop analyst productivity and get better results. Revenue management systems should agree to users to make what-if analysis to study the influence of parameter or input changes on the prediction and maximization model yield. It should be in such a manner it create any type of ad hoc report as users reflect and analyze.Time & Cost: Cost of revenue management systems is generally $1 million to $3 million and takes more than two years to put into practice. Companies should look at low-cost, high-value substitute and choose solutions with lessen inadequacies in designing, developing and executing revenue management software. By offering resources to high-priority matter and functionality and by claiming on reducing avoidable functionality and consulting actions, costs and execution time can be considerably lessen.Demand forecasting and pricing: Demand forecasting is the key tool from which all other revenue management subject goes around. While implementing revenue management systems some times an Achilles heel appears so CEOs should look to demand forecasting and consider that point too. Without precise demand forecasting there will be no optimization of resource provision to products/customers completed. It also include the question, what prices should be specified to which customers through which channels for all products? (Including group, corporate, incentive, Internet.). For example, various demand forecasting methods are used in revenue management in cargo industry are, booking profiles, moving average models, exponential smoothing models (with seasonality and/or trend effects), causal (regression) models, auto-regressive time series models, kalman filters, neural nets, adaptive forecasting models etc.Automation of Revenue Management:Automating the method to take out, transform and load data into revenue management data warehouse, run statistical and mathematical models on a periodic basis, and provide easy interfaces to execute the operation are necessary for considerably improve analyst productivity and business performance.Inventory Control and Sales Management:The sales strength is also a user of information from a revenue management system. Whether it is computerize inventory control or relationship-based sales, companies recognize noteworthy progress in revenues if appropriate RM ideology is incorporated at all sales levels. The buy-in from sales management and cooperation in set up procedure to pursue RM techniques and in generating corresponding incentives plan is serious for long-term success.Apart from the above the following points and analytical procedures are also to be considered.The Revenue Management LifecycleRevenue management is a lifecycle of course of action to create, confine, and accumulate revenue for each customer. It has become a significant element of the enterprise. The Revenue management lifecycle also covers a continuing process of examines, appraise, and maximize each phase of the lifecycle.Revenue CaptureRevenue capture optimizes market share by means of rival pricing models and flexible balance and credit control to allow any service for any subscriber.Revenue AnalysisOn the total revenue management lifecycle revenue analysis is considered and to recognize the revenue relationships with customers and partners it builds up satisfaction. Revenue analysis guarantees all transactions are carrying out with the fullest viable control, integrity, and completeness. It gives real-time verification, reporting, analysis, and control of all procedures and actions which assist optimize revenue and minimize loss linked with fraud and revenue leakage.Profits of implementing Revenue Management and its futureCompanies that want to accomplish something, not just to survive, must put into practice strategic technologies that permit them to constantly alter to vibrant and real-time supply and demand circumstances. Although airlines initiate and exhibit revenue management, it is showing to be a very efficient cutthroat tool in many industries. Unlike other technology vogue, revenue management is extremely rooted in management science and information technology and above all, brings discipline to an organization.Today, many manufacturers and service providers are facing the problems of revenue generation due to intense competition, margins are shrinking more and more, customer loyalty is spoiling gradually and segregation is critical. More than ever before, industry toppers require reacting rapidly to varying market conditions and shifting customer necessities. To meet these threats, global leaders are heavily shiftingtowards revenue management solutions that facilitate them to increase an in depth understanding of the services that customer’s value and how they can be brought for maximum profit.Because creating revenue and optimizing profit are greatest in mind for service providers, they should depend on revenue management solutions to allow them to react to new market opportunities and squeeze the competition by attracting the customer, introducing new services, and in the end driving value to the bottom line. End-to-end management of customer revenue across offerings, channels and geographies are achieved only through revenue management.The future of revenue management was aptly explained in The Wall Street Journal as follows: “Re-engineering has run its course. You manage your quality totally. Where do you turn for future gains? Perhaps to the marketplace, with ‘revenue management.’… Now with computing costs plunging, revenue management is poised to explode.”

Importance in ManagementJohn Kotter describes management as consisting of planning; organising and resourcing; review and control; and communication. All of these activities are heavily influenced and informed by performance management.Performance management is an absolutely essential business management process and an important tool for people managers to use in meeting their business objectives:· Organisations are increasingly realising that it is often not the quality of their strategy but their employees’ ability to implement it that will make the difference. Bossidy and Charan define this ability to execute as ‘the missing link between aspirations and results’.· In addition, in order to maximise an organisation’s potential for achieving its strategy, it is essential that the organisation both creates and develops the capability of its people. Improved business performance can really only be achieved through effective people management.The purpose of Performance Management is, therefore, to increase the effectiveness of people at work in order to improve business performance.Achieving this improvement in performance should be the number one priority for any line manager. A manager can achieve high performance much more easily by working through their team, rather than concentrating on their own day-to-day tasks.By managing their people effectively, managers gain greater productivity from all those in their team. This means less time concentrating on the things that go wrong, and more time on looking ahead to advance their team’s capabilities and improve both their own and their team’s value to the organisation.This is why Jack Welch at GE used to spend more than fifty per cent of his time on people issues.Bureaucracy is HistoryIn practice, many managers concentrate on their own responsibilities and on their own technical / functional expertise, fitting in people management around this. Management becomes an add-on when it should be the central focus of their job.So why is performance management often pushed to the side in this way?A common reason seems to be that performance management is often associated with paperwork, bureaucracy and difficult conversations. This is largely due to the way the process has developed over time.Up until the early 1990s, performance management was seen largely as an appraisal scheme for determining performance related pay increases. People may have used it for setting objectives at the start of the year and were then appraised against their achievement of these objectives at the end of the year. The results of this appraisal would determine pay and promotion.The whole process would have been fairly static with people only really looking at their objectives at the start or end of the year. Some more enlightened organisations may have had more regular reviews, however, common practice was still rather event driven.Since there was little ongoing conversation, the end of year rating would often come as a surprise. This would lead onto long debates about evidence, judgement and subjectivity and an overall deterioration in the line manager / employee relationship.Overall, performance management was rather monolithic, it was owned by HR, viewed as being something you had to do to get paid and certainly not something that was not seen as having real business value.Requirements for EffectivenessPerformance management is now usually seen as a process, rather than an event, with individuals and line managers much more likely to use the process regularly. When used like this, performance management is much more of a monitoring process that helps individuals and line managers take stock of where they are and plan what they need to do to achieve the right results. Performance management processes are also more likely to be used to engage and enhance individual, team and organisational performance.This has been helped by a number of things:· Clarity in performance objectives: whether through the use of scorecards (key performance measures spread over four or more quadrants, for example, people, finance, customer and process) or through Key Performance Indicators, the setting of performance standards is essential. Every member of staff should be clear about their role, what they are expected to do and the level of performance they need to attain. Only when individuals can clearly see how their efforts contribute to the achievement of the organisation’s overall objectives can they fully focus on moving the organisation forward. Individuals appreciate this clarity, become more motivated about what they need to do as a result and are encouraged to develop their capability to achieve as much as they can. Any performance management process needs to ensure that this strand is put in place.· Performance assessment and feedback: naturally enough it is not sufficient just to make it clear to people what they need to do. Effective assessment of performance at regular and appropriate times is also essential. The role of the line manager in this is crucial as they must provide the appropriate guidance, feedback and support to help their staff understand how they are doing; suggest ways of doing things better and to really focus their interactions on increasing effectiveness. Any assessment process must be simple, easy to operate and allow the interactions between the line manager and their reports to be the main focus.· Joint review: the use of a performance management process is much more about joint responsibility now that it once was. Line managers and individuals have to use the process together, each with their own responsibilities, in order that they get the most out of it. In this respect it is more like a performance contract between the individual and the line manager, with both signing up to helping the other achieve the right results and develop in the right ways.· The use of multi-rater feedback: multi-rater feedback has become a much more common part of the performance management process. This provides much greater levels of information and objectivity to the review process, enabling individuals to be more open to development opportunities. It also provides upward feedback and as such allows leadership teams to be much more aware of their areas of development.· Employee engagement: performance management meetings are one of the key ‘moments of truth’ where a line manager can show appreciation of a person’s contribution, identify their career and engagement drivers, and find ways to motivate the individual to perform, grow and stay within the organisation. Even when giving constructive criticism, when done when, performance management meetings should be positive and engaging events.· The development focus: people have seen that development is an essential element of driving up individual performance. Competence frameworks have often been used to assess the level of capability an individual has and identify where they need development. The individual can then undertake some form of development to reduce their capability gap. This focused development can then be seen to directly help the individual perform better in their role and thus increase their contribution to overall organisational performance.· Flexible and pragmatic approach: the processes that are used today are much better able to cope with different needs, requirements and abilities. When building performance management processes the accent needs to be on simplicity, usability and flexibility. This ensures that the process can be used, helps individuals understand what they need to do and how they need to do it (i.e., what are the right behaviours they need to demonstrate) and focuses the organisation on a performance culture. Once again the new performance management is not about control it is about enablement and whatever process is designed, this must be its key aim.· The use of systems and technology: technology can be an enormous help to making a performance process useable and attractive. With the growth of Intranets, a simple solution can be produced that makes the individuals objectives or performance criteria much more accessible. Individuals can be encouraged to look at the system on a more regular basis and see performance management as a continuous process.· This is not a HR owned process: one of the more potent changes has been that forward thinking HR practitioners have understood that they do not own the performance management process. They need to be responsible for creating, embedding and supporting the process but they do not own it; the business does. If performance management is to be a tool to enhance business performance (through enhancing individuals and their development) then the business needs to own it. HR has used this shift as a means of helping HR business partners achieve their objectives. This is a fundamental change that has helped in the understanding of the value of performance management and has significantly increased its usage.Line Manager CapabilityA critical role here is that the line manager is a ‘coach’; someone who helps an individual achieve to their potential and contribute to the overall success of the organisation.Many performance management processes fall down in this area if the development of the coaching skills is not done and if line mangers are not clear that this is their role.An emphasis on the education and development of the line manager should therefore be a significant element of any implementation of performance management.The Business BenefitsWhen done well, performance management provides substantial benefits to an organisation. These benefits include:For the organisation:· Alignment of objectives· Motivation of employees· Support for core values· Improvement in training and development· Development as a learning organisation· Focus on continuous improvement· Basis for career development· Retention of skilled employees· Support for culture change.For line managers:· Clarification of expected performance and behaviour· Support for leadership, motivation and team building· Basis for helping under performers· May be used to develop or coach individuals· Improving relationships with team members· Basis for non-financial reward, including recognition and development.For individuals:· Greater clarity of roles and objectives· Encouragement and support to perform well· Provision of guidance in developing abilities· Improving relationship with their line manager· Clarity over contribution to organisational performance· An objective and fair basis for assessing performance.These benefits are significant. In the private sector, a study by Morgan and Schiemann found that organisations using people measures to help manage their business had a five-year return on investment of 146 per cent, compared to 97 per cent in other organisations, and a one-year return on assets of 4.6 per cent compared to 1.9 per cent in other organisations.In the public sector, effective performance management helps organisations achieve their key performance outcomes, meet the needs of stakeholders and develop operational excellence in providing their services.Line managers should not view performance management as a chore – it is the key to their own effectiveness and to that of their employing organisations.