Dublin, Ireland – 27 May 2019: Datalex has been granted NDC Level 4 status from IATA for its NDC-based solution Digital Commerce Platform under the IATA Certification Program. This status recognizes that the Datalex Digital Commerce Platform supports deployments using full offer and order management messages whose schemas are compliant with the standard NDC message schema, version 18.1.
The certification is testament to Datalex’s ability to enable a new level of NDC functionality, allowing airlines to control which rich content they provide to the indirect channel, and how this content is offered. We wish to thank our deployment partners SAS - Scandinavian Airlines and JetBlue Airways.
IATA’s NDC standard enables the travel industry to transform the way air products are retailed to corporations, leisure and business travelers, by addressing the industry’s distribution limitations. These include challenges such as product differentiation, time-to-market, access to full and rich air content, and a transparent shopping experience.
Through a collaborative approach, NDC participants ensure that the supporting schemas are functional and can be used by all regardless of business focus, geographic location, size, target markets and individual commercial policies. An industry standard facilitates a more efficient airline distribution system, thereby benefitting all players in the travel distribution chain, including airlines, agents, IT providers and travel start-ups.
According to the 2018 white paper ‘Collaborative and Innovative Retailing’ by IATA and Answair, 93% of the participating NDC Leaderboard airlines agreed “…that the ROI for NDC should benefit all partners. As the paper points out, NDC therefore is not simply a method for airlines to control their offers, but allows “…all retailers to collaborate and share in this ever-increasing revenue pie.”
The Datalex Digital Commerce Platform has been designed around the concept of unified offer and order management across all channels. Each day, Datalex’s travel retail customers use the platform to control the offer across all sales channels and to manage a rapidly expanding marketplace of partner suppliers and distributors.
Support for latest NDC standards is a priority in delivery of our Digital Commerce Platform, thus enabling the airline retailer to dynamically orchestrate offer creation and order management between any number of participants.
Resources:
- To learn more about Datalex's NDC solution, click here.
- Video: Sinéad O’Sullivan (Customer Owner, Datalex) and Malachi Faughnan (CIO, Datalex) discuss the drive behind getting IATA Level 4 NDC certification and the new business values this adds for our customers. Click here to watch.