APEX in Profile: Adaptive Channel
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The Airline Passenger Experience Association boasts an envious group of cutting-edge companies ranging from OEMs to Hollywood’s head honchos. During the APEX EXPO, we caught up with Laurent Safar, co-founder of Adaptive Channel, to give you a glimpse behind the suits, ties and formalities and delve into the nuances the company’s story.
Tell us a little bit about how your company got started?
SAFAR: David Fairand and I founded the company a few years ago, each of us with close to 30 years of international experience in the avionics and aerospace sector. When we started Adaptive, I was heading a European business jet and helicopter airline, which needed some significant restructuring.
Airlines had managed legacy content in a dematerialized format for some time (films, music and games), however, newspapers and magazines were still a pain point with complex and costly physical handling. So, we decided to focus on providing a full digital press service to airlines to allow them to improve current process and get ready to reap the benefits of going digital (i.e. generate ancillary revenues, increase loyalty, improve CRM). We immediately got traction for this digital press service, which then integrated other types of content and evolved into the Adaptive Content Entertainment System (ACES).
What are some of the challenges in offering digital press services?
There are many challenges. Initially, the main issue was to persuade leading international newspapers and magazines that digital delivery offered some significant opportunities for them. We also had to gain their confidence on the quality of experience we could provide and assure them that their content was secure was equally important. This is even more of a challenge for newspapers than for magazines since most newspaper consumption is in the morning, very close to publishing deadlines.
There were also other challenges, such as making sure that our ACES platform could work online and offline; on iOS, Android, Windows as well as PCs and Macs; and be able to integrate the software into other applications.
While you started with airlines, your services have branched into other markets, including airports, taxis, rail, clinics and more. Can you describe what led you to branch into these markets?
The short answer is competition!
We focused on airlines and airports because that is the market in which we can significantly leverage our expertise and know how to bring the most value. However, when train operators or taxi operators in Europe started to see their businesses challenged by new innovative startups, such as Uber, they wanted to strongly differentiate their service from the competition, to improve service to premium passengers and to generate loyalty. They looked at airlines for ideas from a mature market and found that Adaptive’s innovative digital press service as well as our highly customized content would be an effective way to reach their business goals.
Does your presence in these different markets offer any added insights to better understanding the end-consumer? For example, did an experience or request for a taxi client alter an approach you took for an airline client?
It does indeed! In particular, we found that operating in several, overlapping markets has generated some highly beneficial cross-fertilization of ideas, which has been advantageous to all parties. In several instances, a technical solution or a business approach, which had proved useful to a railway operator, was then embraced by an airline and vice versa.
Our presence in various markets has also allowed us to broker some innovative partnerships, which were mutually beneficial to all. For example, in a passenger journey, an airport and a taxi operator are very closely linked, and because of our digital presence in both markets, we can implement new approaches to generate value for both operators.
One of your primary service values includes a high-level of customization. What aspects are important to customize? Where are your customers hoping to see the most customization?
The initial request from our airline and airport clients is typically to customize the look and feel or the service and deliver a clear customer service message to the passenger. With print, we notice there can be a haphazard approach to delivery in that passengers are not often aware of who has provided them with a newspaper or magazine. Digital solutions don’t have that problem.
We also offer highly customized content. For example, a Japanese airline requested the live results of the Japanese Baseball League in the Japanese language. In another example, an airport asked us for a different approach to standard music playlists, so we provided the ability to choose music through a mood wall and an artist’s playlist of favorite songs.
The future of flight will be:
Disruptive!