Revenue management without the black box

You're a revenue manager for a mid-size airline. You made your forecast and your pricing strategy based on past performance and on contextual elements. Now, you need to monitor how your flights are selling, how competitor prices are evolving and what's the market situation to adapt your prices.

So, you either build a spreadsheet or a handmade tool that you update manually, or use an automated RM system.

The problem is, most RM systems move prices without explaining why, and lacking context that only your expertise can bring. At some point you would be paying for a frustrating automation that you would override all the time.

This is why we built Pulse.

Combining objective algorithm and human expertise

When Pulse recommends a change, it also explains why. Open a recommendation and you can check the logic behind it: competitor fares on the route, booking pace against the flight's target, days to departure, sales speed, and how comparable flights performed last season.

So when you disagree with a recommendation, you can check what lies behind the change. Sometimes the system adapted the pricing due to a competitor move you missed. Sometimes you know something the data doesn't: a group booking in negotiation, a schedule change upcoming. Either way, you get the best of both worlds.

Choose your automation level

Transparency also means the airline decides how much to automate. Pulse can run fully automated, adapting inventory to market shifts 24/7. It can run in recommendation mode, where the team reviews each change and chooses whether to apply them or not. the automations is flexible: you can also choose an automated mode on stable routes, and a supervised one on sensitive ones.

Does it pay?

Our customers report revenue increases of around 10%. Cilliers Jordaan, CCO of South African carrier Lift, describes Pulse as "at the forefront of new generation Revenue Management in terms of workflow, processes, dashboards and access to analytics."

Pulse is PSS-agnostic: it connects to your existing stack with no migration. Our RM team trains your implementation on your own routes, in a practice environment, before anything touches live inventory.

What's next

A new version of Pulse is launching soon, with a rebuilt interface in a sleek design (see our PR). We’ve reviewed the design to make it easy to use and so that the most important information is visible in a glance.

Laurent Lebard, our Head of RM Strategy, gave an early preview at the World Aviation Festival in Lisbon this October.

Pulse is the revenue management module of CitizenPlane's operating system for airlines, alongside Zenith PSS and Air Distribution. Across all three, the idea is the same: systems that show their logic and leave the airline in control.

Ready for technology built around your operation? Let's talk.