“The PASS Center of Excellence (CoE), a representative office installed in July 2008, provides ARC staff with product-related expertise and training. This ultimately enables ARC to carry out maintenance and enhancements by themselves using PASS proprietary software development tools. Consequently ARC is provided with methodologies which perfectly fit to manage new challenges while at the same time ensuring the ability to respond quickly to changes of business demands or technology. In other words ARC is now able to maintain and modify a product that was originally built by PASS, on its own using the newest technology tools. “Originally these tools have been developed by our research & development department to provide high competitive advantages for our own products and turnkey projects.” says Michael Strauss, CEO of PASS Consulting Corporation & Head of Business Unit Travel Worldwide.

Background
In mid September 2006 PASS was awarded with the creation of the ARC Memo Manager. – A web-based product that automates and improves the current memo distribution and settlement process for both carriers and agencies. The ARC Memo Manager provides an easy way for carriers and travel professionals to electronically process and settle memos. This one-stop application allows processing of both debit and credit memos, two-way communication, and electronic payment. Data is housed in a secure central repository where it remains available for review within ARC Memo Manager for 39 months. The elimination of paper-based processes, reduction of distribution and settlement costs and the improvement of cash flow through electronic payment and faster communication are only a few of the key benefits users can expect by implementing the Memo Manager

In only 6 months, PASS was able to create an application with 5,000 DIPS, a method used to measure and validate the deployed effort when designing a software application, where usually more than a year would be needed. This record-breaking pace for the development of the application was only made possible by the PASS Virtual Software Factory which ensures productivity and quality in software development through a high degree of automation, standardization, its component principle and the ability to develop schemes without typing a single line of code. After several months of intensive testing and usability tests the ARC Memo Manager was officially launched on Aug 9th 2007. This was only the first of many milestones in a successful business relationship “The project worked out very well in spite of the great distance of all its team members.” said Doug Mangold, Director of Product Management for ARC’s Industry Products and Services business line. “PASS demonstrated outstanding response times and always kept the success of the project in mind and we value our long-term relationship with PASS.”
In early 2008 the relationship was faced with the general economic slowdown in airline travel and an USD/Euro exchange rate counterbalancing the profitability of developments carried out in Germany.  Forced to become creative the idea of installing PASS productivity tools outside their premises, on ARC grounds, was born. This way ARC employees themselves can increase ARC’s productivity while at the same time maintain the high quality standard of automatically generated software along with model driven architecture. This is the first time that PASS allows one of its clients to take advantage of their productivity tools. “It took some time to persuade both internal folks at PASS as well as decision makers at ARC to support this idea. In the beginning, PASS was hesitant giving away its competitive advantage – while ARC was cautious about coming overly dependent. However, in the end all concerns have been addressed and it has been working out great” says Michael Strauss. “It took us less than a month of training with the PASS software factory and we were able to support the product with minimal support from PASS. PASS came to our offices in Arlington, installed everything in days and began training. A change request was implemented in a matter of days which we originally scheduled for weeks. We are continuing to dig deeper into the VSF and expanding the number of people at ARC who can work with the VSF.  ARC’s technical resources have also been able to provide valuable feedback to PASS for continued improvement in the VSF.” says Doug Mangold. “At the same time we also installed a Center of Excellence in our office on Miami Beach to carry out a first project for the European Union. With this way of software development there are no limits” says Michael Strauss with excitement about his booming US location

About PASS Consulting Corporation
Miami Beach, FL based PASS Consulting Corporation is an end-to-end technology product and service provider, offering access to travel content and inventory from various sources through a single point-of-sale. PASS Consulting provides software and professional services using emerging, yet proven technologies, such as XML, XSL and Web Services along with SOA and MDA standards.

About ARC
ARC is a technology solutions company providing transaction settlement and data information services.  Airlines, travel agencies, corporate travel departments, railroads, and other travel suppliers process more than $80 billion annually through ARC’s world-class settlement system, making it the financial backbone of travel distribution. ARC COMPASS®, the leading, trusted source for travel transaction information, powers data and analytical tools that help ARC customers make confident business decisions. For more information, please visit www.arccorp.com.