Airlines and airports depend on the latest technology to keep staff efficient, business profitable, and give passengers the best travel facilities. Nader A Shukralla, CEO of ISA – Information Systems Associates – discusses the technology behind the scenes of business travel.

Business Destinations: Airlines and airports depend on the latest technology to keep staff efficient, business profitable and give passengers the best travel facilities. With me to discuss the software that makes business travel possible: Nader Shukralla, the CEO of ISA – Information Systems Associates.

Nader, talk me through the products and services you offer. You started with ACCELaero, the airline reservation system. Today you offer a whole suite of services for airlines as well as airports. What is it about them that gives your customers the ability to improve their business?

Nader Shukralla: Today we have a very wide range of solutions and services that we offer to airlines, airports, and so on. These start with PSS, which is passenger service systems. These include, obviously, CRS (centralised reservation systems), frequent flyer programmes, IBE (internet booking engine – people go online and make their reservations), and so on.

We also have, obviously, DCS, which is the airport check-in system. We have agency reservation systems, we have solutions in the area of crew management – we offer one of the best solutions out there.

The technologies that we have are very much stable, reliable; people can fully rely on them.

Business Destinations: So to keep your customers ahead of their competition, your technology really has to be ahead of your competition.

Nader Shukralla: Yes – it’s true that the software industry is rapidly changing. We have a team of experts who don’t only have the knowledge of IT and the software industry, but they also have the knowledge of the airline industry.

They know how to support our clients, they know how to tweak the systems that we have to meet the airlines’ requirements, and the airports’ requirements.

Our solutions are plug-and-play: we can implement the services that we have across the airlines or airports in no time, basically; because they are very easily tweakable. We can very easily deploy them across various airline sizes.

Business Destinations: ACCELaero is your headline product. Talk me through this, what are the main boxes it’s ticking for your customers?

Nader Shukralla: So basically there are three things. We’ve got the profitability, we have the customer services, and we have the user experience.

When we talk about opportunity obviously, we have the solutions that will help airlines to increase their revenue, and cut down on their expenses. For example, we can link airlines with hundreds and hundreds of travel portals which in return will create direct-selling opportunities for airlines.

We have a fantastic internet reservation system today. We also have fantastic crew pairing and optimisation solutions, which will help airlines reduce their operational costs.

Business Destinations: Tell me more about your approach to user experience; because this really has to be an ongoing dialogue with your customers.

Nader Shukralla: Absolutely. UX is now the main, key factor that helps the airline executive to choose the right solution.

User experience helps staff to work more efficiently, which at the end will help the airline to generate more profitability, and reduce cost of operation.

We have a dedicated team of UX and R&D experts that work very closely with our clients, to ensure that they create seamless experiences that are also very efficient and enhance interaction between the airline users or the client users, and the products and services that we have.

Business Destinations: There are major players in the aviation technology space that have been around for 25, even 50 years – Sabre, SITA, Amadeus. Do you think that ISA will be able to achieve that kind of longevity and stature?

Nader Shukralla: Of course, absolutely! I am very confident that we are on the right track, and we have put in place the right platform for us to grow for many years to come.

Our products and services will contribute directly and indirectly to airlines’ profitability. We have put the customer services at the core of our solutions, which means that the products and services that we have are built based on the customer demands. Which means that when they use our solutions, it is already catered to meet their requirements.

We are technology innovators; we also have the aviation industry knowledge. Merging them together is what creates our success story. We would like to invite all the airlines to take a serious look at us – we want them to experience at first-hand all the solutions that we have, and to see what are the services that we can offer them.

Business Destinations: Nader Shukralla, thank you very much.

Nader Shukralla: Thank you.