In The Big Chair - Kieron Branagan of OpenJaw Technologies

Kieron Branagan, CEO

Founded in Dublin in 2002, OpenJaw Technologies helps travel companies become retailers. In 2016, the company was acquired by TravelSky Technology, a major travel tech player in China. 

Kieron Branagan joined OpenJaw in 2007 after a period spent as a partner at ACT Venture Capital. He has seen OpenJaw through its TravelSky acquisition and is now looking to expand the business in both product development and profile.

You’ve steered OpenJaw through its acquisition by TravelSky - what have been the challenges in that time?

In May 2016, OpenJaw was acquired by TravelSky Technology Limited, the dominant provider of information technology solutions for China’s air travel and tourism industries.

The acquisition was a natural progression from an alliance agreement between the two companies that was signed in 2012 to enable the rollout of OpenJaw’s travel retailing solution to TravelSky’s airline customers.

We are now into this journey a little over two years and have come through a number of challenges. 

As is fairly standard in any change of ownership, it was important initially to reassure our customers, partners and staff that this was a not just a positive change, but a potentially transformational opportunity that could provide us with the scale to significantly grow our offering and our business.

The next challenge was the construction of the new strategic plan for the business and to align all the stakeholders including TravelSky, the OpenJaw team and our customers. 

Following the adoption of the strategic plan, we are now aggressively expanding and scaling the business, and with that includes innovation, new product development and a large-scale ramp-up of operations in China. 

The airline distribution landscape has changed more in the past five years than in the previous 20 years. Sum up in a few lines the journey that airlines are on.

The travel distribution landscape is changing, and the ecosystem has become much more complex and disruptive over the last number of years … from the global distribution system and traditional agency model to the rise of dominant online travel agencies, metasearch platforms, offer and order management, dynamic pricing and big data.

Airlines are working on aggressively changing their distribution channel mix and looking to be able to retail their full offering whether directly on an airline's website, through metasearch channels or through the traditional GDS model.

For OpenJaw, the distribution game-changer is IATA’s NDC, which we consider to be the catalyst to dramatically re-engineer how airlines retail their inventory mix and how they innovate by using an open industry standard.

OpenJaw has been at the forefront of this standard via our involvement with IATA, and apart from delivering the core messaging functionality, we are actively innovating around NDC in areas such as social messaging and predictive and prescriptive analytics using big data. 

Opinions vary widely on the future role of the distribution giants. How do you see their role going forward?

The distribution giants will continue to be distribution giants, at least over the next couple of years.

We are now into this journey a little over two years and have come through a number of challenges.

Kieron Branagan

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A rising market in travel bookings will naturally result in linear growth for the incumbent players who still retain ownership of the core industry platforms (PSS and GDS).

Going forward, I expect to see the giants expand into adjacent areas of value either organically or through mergers and acquisition activity.

Additionally, the trends that should be disruptive to their business models, such as IATA’s NDC or One Order, will be embraced and extended by these players.  

Taking a broader view of technology adoption and disruptive innovation, and how S-curves work, the winners in any sector always look invulnerable, until they don’t.

Think IBM, think Nokia, think Microsoft. 

What changes and improvements have you seen for OpenJaw under the TravelSky umbrella?

OpenJaw has been scaling its business at a much higher rate since the acquisition by TravelSky. We have a supportive parent that has provided us with proprietary access to the Chinese market as well as significant capital to fund our strategic plan.

We are continuing to work closely with TravelSky as we capture an increasing amount of the Chinese airline e-commerce market. Currently, we have seven Chinese airline customers, including Hainan Airlines and Sichuan Airlines, using the OpenJaw t-Retail platform.

These Chinese carriers are transforming themselves into full travel retailers, selling their core flight tickets and combining them with air and ground ancillaries. The OpenJaw customer pipeline in China is incredibly strong – and we will be announcing further new customer wins in the coming months. 

Working in the Chinese market has also changed our perspective on travel technology - especially with respect to mobile and social.

The scale of what is happening in China forces you to revisit your existing (Western) assumptions and understand what you need to change in order to adapt to this incredible opportunity.

OpenJaw was an early proponent of the need for airlines to become retailers. How far do you think airlines are down that path?

During my keynote address at the OpenJaw Travel Summit last year, I spoke about the evolution of travel retailing from our initial announcement in 2012 to today, where travel retailing had become the "new normal."

What I see today is an increasing number of airlines adopting the "retailing" mindset as the industry transforms itself from a "selling seats" frame of reference to asking: "How we can fulfil the customer’s travel requirements across the full customer journey?"

An increasing number of global airline brands are embracing this travel retailing approach, and many of them have experienced spectacular success. 

OpenJaw continues to drive this thinking in our international markets as well as China. Now is the time for airlines to build their retailing strategies and capture all the additional value that is controlled by large OTAs and intermediaries.

OpenJaw recently set out six megatrends that will impact travel. Pick out the three that will most impact travel and how.

The most interesting megatrends relate to the big tech brands moving into other industries, the customer experience imperative and using data to own the customer. 

• Big tech brands moving into other industries: indirect competition 
  
  The big tech brands - Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Facebook - are rapidly diversifying their propositions and expanding a whole range of services. Think of Amazon Echo and Amazon Web Services, Facebook’s Messenger and WhatsApp, Google and their connected home and driving cars initiatives. All of these initiatives appear to be an unconnected mishmash.
  
  Indeed, Gartner calls this mix of new interfaces, devices and content "the intelligent digital mesh." And this digital mesh is enabled by these brands’ powerful digital platforms, creative business models and data. What would happen if Amazon took on the travel industry?

• The customer experience imperative
  
  Customers are valuing experience over sales. High street retailers and shopping malls are looking into how physical destinations can promote their brand, without pushing product sales. This has led to the phenomenon of product-less retail, where retailers use non-selling physical experiences to promote their brands.
  
  Take what Ferrari has done with Ferrari World in Abu Dhabi as an example: They have distilled the brand and turned it into an immersive experience that amplifies the brand AND earns revenue through entry fees and merchandise sales. Think what Disney has been doing for 60 years with its amusement parks.
  
  How strong is your travel brand as a true customer experience? Are you creating what Jan Carlzon, former CEO of SAS, called the "Moments of Truth" – real interactions between the brand and your customers, placing all the emphasis and energy on that idea?

• Using data to own the customer and create the future
  
  We are witnessing a shift that will completely transform travel. The term given to this shift is big data, and it will change everything. Airlines are awash in terabytes of data that can be unlocked to provide insights, actions and outcomes that benefit the airline and their passengers.
  
  However, there is a problem with big data. The problem is not big data itself; rather, the hype. The hype around big data may eventually disappear, but the phenomenon is just starting. The challenge is that Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Facebook also want to own your customer data AND their experience. What if your customers get captured by these brands at the top of the decision-making funnel? You will have no control over this. The lens of these tech brands is: If we own the interface, we own the customer, and we then own the data.
  
  So, what are your plans to acquire, keep and use your own data? How do you plan to unlock the value of your data to make it relevant and actionable? Remember, if your own the customer, you own the data. And if you own the data, you own the future.

The company has been developing a chatbot using IBM Watson. Can you share early learnings as well as how you think chat will ultimately be used in travel - customer service, transactions, customer engagement, etc.?

OpenJaw has developed our t-Social Platform that fuses social messaging platforms (Facebook Messenger, WeChat, WhatsApp) together with cognitive computing platforms (such as IBM Watson) to deliver customer servicing and selling at scale through automation.

The t-Social Platform is applied to the second part of our customer journey map from post-booking servicing, to in-transit, at destination and returning home.  

The design rationale for the t-Social Platform originated from the sheer number of social messaging applications (with Messenger and WhatsApp generating 100-plus billion messages a day, and WeChat in China generating 230-plus billion messages a day) and the convenience for customers to remain within these applications when contacting their travel provider.

This approach enables customer centricity and enhanced cost efficiencies for airlines.

The scale of what is happening in China forces you to revisit your existing (Western) assumptions and understand what you need to change in order to adapt to this incredible opportunity.

Kieron Branagan

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A typical usage scenario is a customer contacting the airline with a baggage allowance query that is facilitated through a chatbot dialogue.

Behind the scenes, we use a complex tapestry of components that interface with core airline systems such as the PSS and also a cognitive computing platform such as IBM Watson that enables us to understand the intent of the user. 

Our initial deployments of this platform show improvements in efficiency and experiential gains with average handling time reduced by 30% and an improved cost efficiency per interaction of 85%. 

As the platform satisfies the servicing request, it then automatically determines if there is an opportunity to move from a servicing context into a selling context, which we then fulfil through IATA NDC, e.g., to purchase an additional bag. 

What have been the most significant developments for OpenJaw itself in the past three years?

The most significant developments relate to our innovation program which we call Project X. This is the framework by which we provide a protected space within the business for small dedicated teams to work on exciting new ideas, products or technologies.

Our innovation program framework is based on a combination of Google X (Moonshot Lab) and the Google Ventures Design Sprint methodology. 

Our innovation portfolio is large and has led to numerous new products such as our cloud-based inventory network (t-Supplier), our cognitive computing platform (t-Social), our marketing solution for airlines (t-Marketing), our Digital Experience platform and our big data platform (t-Data). Our t-Retailing Platform is now optimised for offer and order management. 

We have also transformed our platform infrastructure for default deployment into Amazon Web Services, which we use to host multiple airlines, loyalty programs and OTAs. 

And, now for a few questions about you. If you weren’t CEO of OpenJaw, what company in any industry would you like to lead, and why?

That’s an easy one ... I would chose to lead Ideo, which is a global design company based in Palo Alto, CA.

Over the decades, Ideo has been at forefront of creating change through design. 

If we cut you down the middle, would we see travel technology, just technology or something else?

You might be surprised with what you would see; my interests are fairly broad. 

Undoubtedly you would see technology, given my educational background is computer science and that I have worked in the tech industry for 30-plus years in a variety of roles. 

However, travel technology is fascinating, as it is an industry where so many technologies and business models converge, and in some cases, in a very disruptive way (e.g., platform model businesses). 

What startup specifically or perhaps area of innovation in travel are you most keeping an eye on and why?

The area of innovation in travel that I think will have the greatest impact relates to big data and data science. We have invested heavily in this area in OpenJaw and see huge opportunities in being able to better monetize the whole customer journey.

Do you invest personally in startups? And, if so, what do you most look for when investing?

I am as a CEO of OpenJaw precluded from investing in other companies. I spent many years investing in companies as a partner in a venture capital firm and have gained many insights. 

Investing is all about taking a portfolio approach and not investing in just one opportunity. 

However, for any company that is a potential investment opportunity, you need to understand:

• The problem or opportunity being addressed
• The value proposition
• The underlying magic
• The business model
• The go-to market plan
• The competitive analysis
• The management team
• The financial projections  
• The use of the funds

And even after getting comfort on all of the above, sometimes it just comes down to the company being in the right place at the right time!