Virgin Atlantic gets Mercator Skychain cargo management system

Airline behemoth Virgin Atlantic has signed in as the latest customer of SkyChain, an end-to-end IT cargo management system developed by Dubai-based business technology provider Mercator.Mercator plans to complete implementation by the end of April 2009. The solution will be implemented in Virgin Atlantic Cargo headquarters in Crawley, England, to be used by their staff and appointed partners globally. The British carrier becomes the fifth airline to join a client list for Mercator’s SkyChain solution, including Emirates Airline, Swiss WorldCargo, Midex Airlines, and SriLankan, proving SkyChain to be one of the industry’s key future cargo solutions.

According to Duncan Alexander, Vice President, Mercator, ‘the team at Virgin Atlantic put our team and our solution through an extremely rigorous selection process. We are delighted to now be their provider and look forward to implementing a business transforming solution.” Virgin Atlantic’s director of Cargo John Lloyd pointed out that, “We will now have cutting-edge systems capabilities to support our award-winning service and staff. Our current systems have served us well, however it is time for us to move up a gear and provide our customers with the levels of connectivity they require, along with streamlined business processes and the ability to stay ahead in what is an increasingly competitive and dynamic industry.”

SkyChain, a centralised cargo reservation and business management solution, offers a number of advantages over existing systems. Benefits include compatibility with a wide host of customer systems, capacity to accommodate upgrades and changes through Java architecture, and real-time access and updates, all designed to address the current needs of today’s cargo customer.

From its launch in April 2004, SkyChain was built in less than two-and-a-half years and was successfully implemented in August 2006. Built by a team of over 150 IT and cargo professionals in Dubai, an overall effort of about 300 person years has contributed to creating the system, making it the largest single software development project in the aviation industry in recent times.

Mercator is into supplying business transformation, process improvement and return on investment to more than 100 customers in five continents. Mercator’s solutions and services include financial management, cargo and logistics, passenger and airport solutions, process outsourcing, CRM and loyalty, hotel sales distribution, IT consulting and systems integration.