Kale Consultants to partner in IATA project

Hyderabad: Kale Consultants, a provider of IT solutions to the airline, logistics and travel industries, will team up with the International Air Transport Association (IATA) for the development of its industry-wide Simplified Interline Settlement (SIS) project that will help the global airline industry, including domestic carriers for saving US$ 500 million annually from next year.

IATA is gearing up to implement the SIS initiative, which will streamline the interline billing and settlement process. The SIS initiative envisages significant cost savings for airlines — from reduction in paper, postage, and courier fees to paring down manpower cost involved in invoice registration, document preparation, document sorting and transaction level reconciliation.

It is estimated that over 300 airlines will be using this system after it becomes operational in 2010.

The first phase of the initiative, involving mapping out the precise requirement of the industry, is expected to be completed by next month. The second phase involves developing the entire package.

SIS will handle over one million invoices a year and will be used by over 300 airlines — including domestic carriers — besides supporting over 3,000 users around the globe.

The SIS project is added to the company’s existing partnership with IATA on the new billing initiative.

The basic objective of the SIS initiative is the removal of paper from the billing and settlement process.

The SIS solution will encompass passenger, cargo and miscellaneous interline billings and entries to the IATA Clearing House (ICH) for settlements.

The SIS project also involves integration of the IDEC (interline data exchange centre) passenger and cargo billing with ICH settlement on a weekly basis.