Seven weeks of writing this, and one pattern keeps coming back.

Most of the expensive mistakes I get called into were made by good teams who had the wrong specialist in the room.

A distribution problem handed to a payments team turns into a PSP tender. A payments problem handed to a distribution team turns into an NDC roadmap. A commercial problem given to either one turns into a technology programme with a long runway and no clear owner.

You can see it in the seven pieces so far. The NDC plateau looks like a standards problem and is a servicing problem. Offers and Orders looks like a schema problem and is a contract problem. Payment cost looks like a procurement problem and is mostly a conversion problem.

Three problems and what each one actually is. The NDC plateau looks like a standards problem and is a servicing problem. Offers and Orders looks like a schema problem and is a contract problem. Payment cost looks like a procurement problem and is mostly a conversion problem

Airlines and travel tech have separated these functions almost completely. Distribution reports one way, payments another, and the person who understands both is often a vendor with something to sell.

That is the space I work in. Not strategy decks. Mostly sitting in the room and helping a team work out which of the three problems they actually have, before the budget goes out.

I have been putting the long versions in the writing archive, with every figure sourced and dated so you can check them rather than take my word for it. Seven up there now, one a week.

Twenty years, most of it on the operator side rather than the advisory side. I think that matters, but you can judge for yourself.

Back to the industry posts next week. Airline acquiring, and a number I do not think gets enough attention.

What I left out

This piece has no numbers of its own, which is the point, but it also makes it the least checkable thing I have written here. The pattern comes from the work I get called into, and the work I get called into is not a random sample. Teams who have already sorted this out do not phone me.

Sources

The figures in this piece are sourced in the individual posts it refers back to.