Airline Reporting Corporation (ARC)

Brittenford Systems, Inc., helps the airlines reporting corporation fight a turbulent industry to achieve a stable and fffective budget.

The Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC) is an airline-owned company serving the travel industry with financial services, data products and services, ticket distribution, and settlement in the United States, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

ARC began as part of the Air Transport Association (ATA) operating the Area Settlement Plan (ASP), a clearinghouse operation established in 1964. With deregulation of the airline industry, ASP functions separated from ATA and were incorporated in 1984 as Airlines Reporting Corporation.

As the Travel industry steadily became more information-driven, ARC added business intelligence, data warehousing and analytics to its service portfolio thus significantly broadening its customer base.  Building on more than four decades of experience as the leading provider of financial, business intelligence and marketing services to the travel industry, ARC today continues to develop opportunities for its participants and partners to profit from secure, efficient management and delivery of Travel information services.
With annual processing volumes exceeding $70 billion and unequaled data depositories, ARC is the information hub of the travel industry.

Situation

ARC was using insufficient budgeting and planning tools to support their first-class business operations center.  ARC used more than 50 spreadsheets to capture and link financial data between various business units and department managers. 

ARC solicited input from 30 managers to create a comprehensive budget that was stored on their shared internal network.  Because the financial data and plans were stored internally, remote users were unable to access critical budget data when they needed it and they relied heavily on email to distribute reports.

The entire budget planning process from research to collaboration to revision control was slow, error-prone and labor intensive.  ARC wanted to adapt to current market conditions and was committed to further growing their business.  ARC realized they needed to focus on controlling costs within its operational budget.  They needed a financial product that would integrate easily with current Microsoft Business Solutions software. 

Solution

Brittenford implemented Microsoft FRx financial reporting application for ARC.  Brittenford trained ARC’s staff to collect data, run reports, compare current numbers with historical data and look at different financial scenarios.  With FRx, ARC now can see where their organization stands financially at any given time with its complete financial reporting and analysis expertise based on dependable information.  Brittenford then deployed Microsoft Forecaster, a web-based budgeting tool.  ARC could now stay both profitable and compliant with corporate regulations with faster, streamlined, and automated budgeting capabilities.  The simplified budget planning process began by mapping the historical data from their general ledger so that ARC could quickly respond to industry changes.