Celebrating our 5th Anniversary
Tue 26/09/2006
ClickAirport -- a classic post dot.com success
5 years ago, a small software & systems house in Bournemouth, UK, announced the launch of a new web-based global computing initiative.
Remember 2001? Technology fever had been rife. Investor greed had overtaken business sanity, and the talk was of a brave new world where Business School principles were outdated.
The dot.com boom dominated the US in 1999 & 2000. Vast marketing budgets went on promotions & parties, long before products were tested to be of commercial strength. Name recognition was the creed. Similar behaviour affected Europe, though a season later and less extreme.
The inevitable happened. The bubble burst. Paper fortunes were destroyed in the meltdown. By 2001 it was all over bar the recriminations.
Into those dog days of investment disillusion with all things internet, ClickAirport launched. Against the flow, they are a classic case of those companies who have shown that the internet is a serious business tool, alive & well post dot.com. They have done more business in 2006 than in their previous history combined.
How? By being real. By identifying a genuine market need, building a proper product that works, listening to their potential clients, & making haste slowly. No huge investors or razzle dazzle. Just care to ensure customer satisfaction, & to work within their means. Prudent business management to safeguard cash flow. Not running before they can walk ensures that resources match market payback.
Sounds familiar. Isn't that what careful start-ups did in the 80's & 90's. Yes. Isn't it what business schools have always taught? Yes. Isn't it difficult to generate explosive growth this way? Yes -- but you protect against explosive detonation as well.
Survival & successful market testing provide the foundation for expansion. You need cash to survive, & measured market penetration creates its own difficulties -- you have to cover operating costs & generate cash flow. Historically, those start-up cash reserves were created within small companies by shareholder funds, often as loans. ClickAIrport is no different.
ClickAirport has now earned its stripes. It has market momentum, & it has satisfied clients. That's the major turning point, vital to every company. It can now emerge from its chrysalis & become a butterfly.
So what does ClickAIrport do? It builds web-based managed systems that improve the effectiveness of dispersed work groups. As the company name suggests, the initial focus has been on improving the operational efficiency of airfields. It has tackled areas that have always caused problems -- the organisation & management of far-flung workers in a hostile environment.
Many airfields operate 24x365. At the very least, their staff work in all weathers, in dark as well as light, often with high noise levels. Today's communications tools can be a great improvement compared to what was, but they struggle to cope with this hostile environment. Radios are drowned out by jet noise or PA systems; paper is difficult to use when soggy in the dark ... and none of these tools excel when you need to provide robust audit trails, or store & share information amongst & between teams.
Aviation regulators are now firmly in control of most of the industry, via training, mandatory procedures & aircraft design legislation. The area which is now under intense focus is that of the airfield itself -- it's operating practices, & safety & security issues.
Incidents such as the Concorde crash brought massive public attention to the vulnerability of aircraft to events started by apparently minor causes. In that case, the trigger was a piece of metal on the runway that burst a tyre. In other cases, bird strikes cost millions in damage every year & cause serious accidents.
The ramp area around aircraft at any turnround is swamped by ant-like activity as a host of different companies attend to their own duties, like a synchronised swimming routine. Refuellers, caterers, baggage loaders, engineers, cleaners, aircrew, cargo container trains -- all these & more jostle in a tightly-confined space, against a merciless clock. In this pressure cooker environment, it is no surprise that there are very expensive human errors made, & that contact between vehicles, & occasionally with aircraft, occurs.
ClickAirport's claim to fame is that they have systems that help bring structure & precision to the management of these processes. Early adopters have shown repeatable success in improving team effectiveness, minimising risks, & providing a simple audit trail to investigate incidents in close to real time.
Field staff use PDA's to receive task allocations, & often have a structured checklist of the type familiar to any aircrew member. On the PDA's they easily record details of progress, often by multi-choice questions to simplify data entry. On completion, they automatically pass the entire history of their tasks back to a web-based management console.
Any authorised supervisor or manager can access any combination of operational data, from any internet access point. They use this to investigate incidents, to determine fault, to identify ways of improving, & to better understand resource requirements.
But it's not just the aircraft manoeuvring areas that need attention. The passenger terminals & other airfield facilities must also be continually inspected for regulatory & performance feedback.
Large terminals are equivalent to super-stressed city areas, often handling in excess of 100,000 passengers a day -- but with added time criticality, unfamiliarity, confusion & apprehension.
Passengers expect a least-stressful passage from their arrival to aircraft departure. Queue lengths must be managed, whether check-in, baggage claim, security or immigration. Terminals must be clean, with working equipment. Concessions must work as expected. Safety & fire regulations must be met. Performance goals must achieved, lessons learnt, & resources & budgets optimised.
Terminals are often in competitive environments. Airlines may switch airports. Passengers may switch airlines and/or airports -- or go by rail, road, or not travel at all if air travel is too stressful. Terminal managers must understand the commercial effectiveness of their areas, and that can be swiftly addressed using similar tools to those managing airside operational performance.
These characteristics are important success criteria in ClickAirport's current market. Interestingly, these same benefits are sought by a host of other companies in different market segments, but who share similar control & reporting issues.
The more the risk, the greater the regulation, the more the consistency of performance management with ClickAirports' web-based tools becomes attractive.
Some sectors are like airports in being heavily dependent on mobile workers using PDA's. Others have large numbers of office-based workers who may use PC's as input devices. Many users will combine both. Workgroups in travel & distribution, ports, logistics & parcels companies all have close operational affinity to airfields.
Interestingly, others as diverse as security patrols, hospitals, event management, police forces and many others, want to manage distributed workgroups & record incidents, but without the nightmare of productive staff becoming office bound whilst they file their reports.
Looking into the short-term future, ClickAIrport are seeing demand for increased use of photographic evidence, sound clips, RFID & wireless communications. They are also seeing international demand, especially in Europe.
The world of ClickAirport is about to expand, rapidly. That's their reward for sticking to tried & tested business best practice -- &, in a subtle twist, that's precisely what they bring to their clients.
Let's finish with a quote from David Townend, the business success architect of this interesting company ..........
"We're a patient company whose time has come. We've been given great feedback by our users, some of whom have seen 400% + productivity increases using our systems. Regulators are keen on what we do, & we are now installed at major civil & military airfields. We see our growth compounding, with new partner initiatives & into new market sectors. It's good to know that our early business model & our customer focus have been so well vindicated"
Remember 2001? Technology fever had been rife. Investor greed had overtaken business sanity, and the talk was of a brave new world where Business School principles were outdated.
The dot.com boom dominated the US in 1999 & 2000. Vast marketing budgets went on promotions & parties, long before products were tested to be of commercial strength. Name recognition was the creed. Similar behaviour affected Europe, though a season later and less extreme.
The inevitable happened. The bubble burst. Paper fortunes were destroyed in the meltdown. By 2001 it was all over bar the recriminations.
Into those dog days of investment disillusion with all things internet, ClickAirport launched. Against the flow, they are a classic case of those companies who have shown that the internet is a serious business tool, alive & well post dot.com. They have done more business in 2006 than in their previous history combined.
How? By being real. By identifying a genuine market need, building a proper product that works, listening to their potential clients, & making haste slowly. No huge investors or razzle dazzle. Just care to ensure customer satisfaction, & to work within their means. Prudent business management to safeguard cash flow. Not running before they can walk ensures that resources match market payback.
Sounds familiar. Isn't that what careful start-ups did in the 80's & 90's. Yes. Isn't it what business schools have always taught? Yes. Isn't it difficult to generate explosive growth this way? Yes -- but you protect against explosive detonation as well.
Survival & successful market testing provide the foundation for expansion. You need cash to survive, & measured market penetration creates its own difficulties -- you have to cover operating costs & generate cash flow. Historically, those start-up cash reserves were created within small companies by shareholder funds, often as loans. ClickAIrport is no different.
ClickAirport has now earned its stripes. It has market momentum, & it has satisfied clients. That's the major turning point, vital to every company. It can now emerge from its chrysalis & become a butterfly.
So what does ClickAIrport do? It builds web-based managed systems that improve the effectiveness of dispersed work groups. As the company name suggests, the initial focus has been on improving the operational efficiency of airfields. It has tackled areas that have always caused problems -- the organisation & management of far-flung workers in a hostile environment.
Many airfields operate 24x365. At the very least, their staff work in all weathers, in dark as well as light, often with high noise levels. Today's communications tools can be a great improvement compared to what was, but they struggle to cope with this hostile environment. Radios are drowned out by jet noise or PA systems; paper is difficult to use when soggy in the dark ... and none of these tools excel when you need to provide robust audit trails, or store & share information amongst & between teams.
Aviation regulators are now firmly in control of most of the industry, via training, mandatory procedures & aircraft design legislation. The area which is now under intense focus is that of the airfield itself -- it's operating practices, & safety & security issues.
Incidents such as the Concorde crash brought massive public attention to the vulnerability of aircraft to events started by apparently minor causes. In that case, the trigger was a piece of metal on the runway that burst a tyre. In other cases, bird strikes cost millions in damage every year & cause serious accidents.
The ramp area around aircraft at any turnround is swamped by ant-like activity as a host of different companies attend to their own duties, like a synchronised swimming routine. Refuellers, caterers, baggage loaders, engineers, cleaners, aircrew, cargo container trains -- all these & more jostle in a tightly-confined space, against a merciless clock. In this pressure cooker environment, it is no surprise that there are very expensive human errors made, & that contact between vehicles, & occasionally with aircraft, occurs.
ClickAirport's claim to fame is that they have systems that help bring structure & precision to the management of these processes. Early adopters have shown repeatable success in improving team effectiveness, minimising risks, & providing a simple audit trail to investigate incidents in close to real time.
Field staff use PDA's to receive task allocations, & often have a structured checklist of the type familiar to any aircrew member. On the PDA's they easily record details of progress, often by multi-choice questions to simplify data entry. On completion, they automatically pass the entire history of their tasks back to a web-based management console.
Any authorised supervisor or manager can access any combination of operational data, from any internet access point. They use this to investigate incidents, to determine fault, to identify ways of improving, & to better understand resource requirements.
But it's not just the aircraft manoeuvring areas that need attention. The passenger terminals & other airfield facilities must also be continually inspected for regulatory & performance feedback.
Large terminals are equivalent to super-stressed city areas, often handling in excess of 100,000 passengers a day -- but with added time criticality, unfamiliarity, confusion & apprehension.
Passengers expect a least-stressful passage from their arrival to aircraft departure. Queue lengths must be managed, whether check-in, baggage claim, security or immigration. Terminals must be clean, with working equipment. Concessions must work as expected. Safety & fire regulations must be met. Performance goals must achieved, lessons learnt, & resources & budgets optimised.
Terminals are often in competitive environments. Airlines may switch airports. Passengers may switch airlines and/or airports -- or go by rail, road, or not travel at all if air travel is too stressful. Terminal managers must understand the commercial effectiveness of their areas, and that can be swiftly addressed using similar tools to those managing airside operational performance.
These characteristics are important success criteria in ClickAirport's current market. Interestingly, these same benefits are sought by a host of other companies in different market segments, but who share similar control & reporting issues.
The more the risk, the greater the regulation, the more the consistency of performance management with ClickAirports' web-based tools becomes attractive.
Some sectors are like airports in being heavily dependent on mobile workers using PDA's. Others have large numbers of office-based workers who may use PC's as input devices. Many users will combine both. Workgroups in travel & distribution, ports, logistics & parcels companies all have close operational affinity to airfields.
Interestingly, others as diverse as security patrols, hospitals, event management, police forces and many others, want to manage distributed workgroups & record incidents, but without the nightmare of productive staff becoming office bound whilst they file their reports.
Looking into the short-term future, ClickAIrport are seeing demand for increased use of photographic evidence, sound clips, RFID & wireless communications. They are also seeing international demand, especially in Europe.
The world of ClickAirport is about to expand, rapidly. That's their reward for sticking to tried & tested business best practice -- &, in a subtle twist, that's precisely what they bring to their clients.
Let's finish with a quote from David Townend, the business success architect of this interesting company ..........
"We're a patient company whose time has come. We've been given great feedback by our users, some of whom have seen 400% + productivity increases using our systems. Regulators are keen on what we do, & we are now installed at major civil & military airfields. We see our growth compounding, with new partner initiatives & into new market sectors. It's good to know that our early business model & our customer focus have been so well vindicated"
Contact us to see how we can help you. info@clickairport.com