Writes Lynne Harrison
New opportunities have been a bit sparse during the past six months, combined with a lot of ‘hurry up and wait’ with decisions, just to add to the frustration. There has, however, been a lot of focus on, firstly, renewing existing contracts – a priority because it impacts ServiceTec people at those sites – and, secondly, preparing for future opportunities coming during the next 18 months to two years, of which we hope there will be plenty.
We’ve been busy making sure we are seen at various industry events and conferences, which is very much a team effort! Highlighting the main, nationally-oriented ones: it really started back in February at the ACI-NA CEO Forum, held near San Antonio, TX which I attended. Currently, ServiceTec is the only IT support organization participating in this event – the non-airport people are mainly from the concessionaires or are consultants – so we do tend to stand out.
In March, especially as Salt Lake City was hosting, the sales team attended the AAAE/ACC Planning, Design and Construction Symposium. Although the projects discussed here typically won’t affect us directly until sometime way in the future, we usually attend to see what’s coming.
April found Pietro, Brian, Jacob and me at ACI-NA Airports@Work in New Orleans, LA where we, once again, co-sponsored “the best party” – winning us a lot of kudos. I know a lot of interesting conversations took place standing on a balcony looking out over Bourbon Street!
The following week, Laura was our “token American” at PTE in Frankfurt, which was why she wasn’t in New Orleans. Also, we haven’t ignored Canada. We wouldn’t normally attend FOAM (Facilities, Operations, Airport Management), which is a Canadian airports conference and not geared towards IT. But, as it was being held in Regina, how could we not be supportive?! Laura and Adriano duly ‘flew the ServiceTec flag’.
Things usually slow down during the summer – although we’ll be at SMART Airports in Denver, CO in July – which can be a good conference as it is more internationally oriented.
Our main show, however, the ACI-NA Annual Conference and Exhibition, is only weeks away, in early September in Grand Rapids, MI.
In addition to being seen ‘out and about’; we’ve also been continuing to improve the way we do things – and investing in new tools to help. We’ve introduced a new expenses system – Expensify – which some of you may be using and, elsewhere in this newsletter, Laura will tell you more about our new CRM system. The sales “library” project – where we plan to store write ups about the cool stuff we do at our operational sites (for inclusion in future sales proposals, etc.) is also taking shape.
We also decided to have a bit of fun with the Our Work page on our website – instead of simply talking about numbers of terminals and runways we’ve tried to include some ‘fun facts’ about the local area. Did you know that JFK is the only airport with a dedicated animal terminal; that a town near Regina is home to the World’s largest red paperclip or that the Mai Tai was invented in Oakland not Hawaii (as most people think)?
Check out our website for more (hopefully) entertaining trivia – and, if you know something about your location that you think should be included, please email me.
Finally, like many people, I’m excited about exploring whatever is new – in our case that would be the next new airport – and I’m hoping there will be plenty of opportunities to do that during the coming months. US airports, in particular, are busy. In fact, TSA recently reported their busiest day since they were founded in November 2001, screening 2.95m passengers on May 24th, 2024. Airports literally cannot build new facilities fast enough! So, we have lots of potential to expand at existing airports and to add new ones.
It should be fun!
Lynne Harrison
Group CFO
