Under a new strategic alliance, Satcom Direct will feature MySky's artificial intelligence-powered aircraft spend management technology within its SD Pro flight data management platform. (Satcom Direct)
Satcom Direct established a new strategic alliance with MySky to bring artificial intelligence (AI)-powered spend management to its SD Pro flight operations data management platform.
Switzerland-based MySky first launched its Spend Management application in 2015, bringing the use of character recognition, machine learning and real time analysis of individual aircraft procurement and forecasting. Both companies plan to release the upgraded version of SD Pro by the end of the year, with a focus on enabling more end-to-end transparency for all financial transactions that occur between aircraft owners and fleet management providers.
SD Pro is Satcom Direct's open architecture data management platform that flight departments use for everything from tracking aircraft voice and data usage per flight to generating maintenance reports and tracking component lifecycle performance. As a result of the integration with MySky, SD will add a financial component to its SD Pro platform and promote increased "fiduciary duty amongst industry stakeholders," according to Satcom Direct.
Kirill Kim, co-founder and CEO of MySky, told Avionics International the alliance with Satcom Direct will help fleet management providers improve the way they communicate procurement costs to aircraft owners.
"Asset managers process invoices and bill owners, and previously owners never knew if what they're paying for was fair, and for the asset managers, they never could show or prove a measured level of efficiency for what they perform," Kim said. "We take all invoices, process and then benchmark all your costs to show what you're spending against market averages in terms of procurement. If you're inefficient, we can show asset owners a fair assessment of where they stand in terms of procurement and how to improve the spend going forward."
MySky's new alliance with Satcom Direct comes amid a period of continued expansion and growth for the company, including their announcement in June of a partnership with S&P Global Platts to add the company's global database of jet fuel price assessments, giving owners more access to market averages for fuel costs based on where they are operating.
"One of the features of benchmarking, we can pick up any invoice in the past and tell you on a specific date, how to analyze that invoice, to see if you were spending or saving enough on a specific date at a specific airport," Kirill said.
Both owners and managers will be able to view all financial information generated about every flight on the SD Pro dashboard. The upgrade will bring a dedicated MySky portal to SD Pro and add a new finance application that keeps track of all of the costs savings being achieved for each individual aircraft in real time.
Colin Quarless, vice president of product management and strategy for Satcom Direct said the alliance could also open up new opportunities to improve the way owners manage connectivity procurement and service costs. Since SD Pro already captures voice and data usage on a per month basis, owners will now be able to see how much they're paying to operate in-flight Internet service on a per flight or per month basis compared to the industry average.
"We believe there will be a lot of power in what the data synchronization will do between the platforms," Quarless said. "We already record the procurement spend on a per flight or per month basis, and now we can share that data as part of an end to end spend management inclusive of connectivity."