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The following newsletter outlines the news from the
Superstructure Group AQD team for April/May 2007.
As AQD continues to grow from strength to strength we would like to extend a
warm welcome to our new customers. Since our last newsletter more than 16
new customers have joined our fast growing customer list - Air Pacific, CAUC,
COPA, DHL Aviation South Africa, Flightline, Luxair, Malaysian Airlines, NAS,
North American Airways, Norwegian Air Shuttle, Solomon Airlines, Sri Lankan
Airlines, Thomas Cook Airlines, V/Line Passenger Service, Vueling Airlines
S.A., World Air.
At the same time 3 major airlines have expanded their use of AQD
by upgrading to an enterprise-wide licence.
We are also delighted to welcome the Civil Aviation University
of China who are using AQD to support their aviation education and training
programs. These are currently in place for pilots, aviation specialists
and air traffic controllers.
We now have over 60 customers using AQD for safety and quality
management with a spread across international, national, regional, low cost,
charter and cargo carriers. We continue the expansion of AQD outside
airlines with airports, air traffic control, maintenance, training centres and
rail services as our customers. Superstructure Group is the market leader
in aviation safety and quality management systems with more airlines using AQD
than any other system.
Have a look at the
News and
Testimonials
sections on our website.
At Superstructure we believe in working with our customers to
provide new products and services to fit all shapes and sizes. As part of
this continuing process, we have been asked to develop a fully hosted service
for AQD. This is already in its trial phase with a launch customer and we
anticipate being able to offer this service to all by the end of the
year. This will be particularly attractive to those organisations that
want to embrace safety and quality management and either want to outsource the
management of their system or prefer the economics of an outsourced safety
analysis service.
In parallel with looking at innovative ways to
deliver AQD, we are continuing to extend our consulting capability. This
will take us to a position whereby Superstructure is able to offer full advice
on setting up and optimising a complete Safety Management System for airlines.
As our customer base continues to grow, so our
global customer facing team continues to expand to support it. We have
recently welcomed two new members to the London-based team, Martin Penney our
new Sales Manager for AQD and Peter Hunt who is an Account Manager and
primarily responsible for training and implementations. Many of our
customers have met Peter and enjoyed his enthusiasm as he travels the world
implementing AQD. Melissa Brauman has joined the team to manage our
hosted and out-sourced services in the Middle East. We are also currently
recruiting for additional Client Services resources in New Zealand and building
for expansion in the Americas.
As we continue to expand and attract new customers, we are in an
ideal position to influence and support the industries that we serve. To
this end we are actively involved in the UK Flight Safety Committee and the
Flight Safety Foundation. In addition, Eddie Rogan recently spoke on the
value of information sharing analysis at the IATA Ops Forum in Montreal in
April.
As part of our commitment to our customers we have strengthened
our Account Management function. Each customer is assigned an Account
Manager who is in regular contact to ensure that they understand your business
and deliver products and services which match your needs.
Account Managers assist with: additional training
to ensure AQD supports the safety and quality management functions in the
airline, new release planning, establishing functional priorities for future
releases; and are a contact point for escalation of delivery and support
issues. If you want further information on Account
Management please contact Eddie Rogan at
eddie.rogan@superstructuregroup.com.
In addition to our dedicated Account Management function we will
be hosting regionally focused customer events, to which all our customers are
invited. These regional events are an important part of
our continuing dialogue with our customers and allow us to focus on developing
the functions that are most important to you.
We kicked off these events with three
regional product workshops in March and April with a number of our
customers. Our aim was to get first hand feedback on the new AQD
product. Many positives came from the meetings; the enhancements to the
new release of AQD (AQD v6) were well received and all present could see the
value of the additional features.
One item on the agenda was the product rollout
plan for future releases of AQD. Customers showed particular interest in
the proposed Risk Management module. This allows users to focus on
proactive risk management to maintain operational safety standards.
At the US workshop, customers were delighted to
see ASAP compliance high on the agenda for AQD v6. Most operators in the
region run ASAP for multiple disciplines (pilot, maintenance, cabin etc).
An enhancement to AQD will allow all these programs to be run within AQD.
This will result in better utilisation of internal administrative resources as
one system will be used for the collection and analysis of information.
We have more events coming up and hope to see as
many of you there as possible. The first of these will be in Seoul,
Korea on October 1st 2007, the day before the IASS Conference
starts. Put this date in your diary! Further regional events will
held in the Americas and EMEA over the coming year.
Our development team is completing the final stages of acceptance
testing for AQD Version 6. This is due to be released to customers in
July 07, and contains a wealth of new enhancements that make AQD applicable
across ever wider areas of your business.
AQD v6 represents a major investment in the
AQD technology platform delivering not only additional functionality, but
also a user interface based on the new MS Office 2007 standards. In
particular with this release, a lot of work has been done on making the
system even easier to use, so that a wider section of your workforce can
use AQD and become more effective in safety and quality management.
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The simplified user interface includes a role driven navigation pane (similar
to Microsoft Outlook) to make the product more intuitive to use for an
increasingly Microsoft-aware workforce.
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Simplified screen layouts using icons within the header and a new web-interface
make it easier and quicker to capture safety information.
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Enhancements have been made to the user's interaction with AQD.
Standardisation of terminology, reduced number of key strokes to perform an
action and the general use of the application all help the user to feel
confident using AQD.
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In terms of new functionality, assessments for occurrences and
standardising the management of eReports means AQD is better aligned with the
airline's safety and quality processes.
The good news for IT departments is that minimal effort will be
required to upgrade from the current v5 product to the new AQD v6. Your
Account Managers will be in contact with you to discuss your upgrade plans.
Planning is well underway and initial design specifications have
been completed for the next phase of development scheduled for the end of
2007. The next release will bring enhanced ASAP support for our US
customers, automatic email alerting and an import/export module to facilitate
data sharing.
Take a look at the new AQD v6. Click on the image to
enlarge.
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