Retailing Implementation Forum 2023 takeaways

The IATA Retailing Implementation Forum has become the not-to-miss gathering for value chain players with live NDC deployments.

The aim of the forum is to provide implementers with a platform to ask questions and benchmark their implementation advances and experiences. These discussions are vital to help identify and address roadblocks and possible areas of improvement, as the adoption of the IATA standards continues to bring customer centricity to life.
  
The 2023 edition of the Forum took place on 5-6 September in Geneva, Switzerland and was attended by nearly 100 industry professionals representing each link of the airline distribution value chain.

Aside from the perennial updates on the schemas' evolution and the end-to-end implementation flow best practices, the intensive two-day agenda zoomed into critical areas, such as 21.3 deployment, servicing, value chain partnerships and interlining.

The Forum concluded on a high note with several notable observations and takeaways:  

• Schema 21.3 and post-21.3 version releases are the way forward with more robust documentation to address critical areas, such as servicing and reduction of implementation variances. In fact, the majority of participants are planning their 21.3 deployment and over 80% expect to deploy by yearend 2024.
• The success of servicing is not unidimensional, and the outcome depends on two elements: what the standard supports and the actual implementation approach taken by each player. There also was agreement on the importance of shared ownership and equal level of readiness among all value chain players.  
• The Implementation Guide, its referencing and following, is key to achieving industry standardization.
• NDC should always be approached as a stepping stone on a wider transformation journey and thus, should be always planned and actioned with the end-vision (a World of Offers and Orders) in mind.

Do you oversee the NDC implementation at your organization and want to get in touch for a future participation in the Forum? Let us know at ndc@iata.org