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AirPlus is expanding its product development and innovation activities. The cutting-edge company has already received numerous international travel industry awards for its novel products. Now, AirPlus is about to build its long-term organisational capacities for successful product development. To pool resources and expertise for the further development of innovative solutions, AirPlus launched the research and development (R&D) team at the start of this year.
R&D staff work outside daily business to put ideas into practice and develop prototypes in preparation for market launch. This offers several benefits. “A prototype shows us how we can adjust the idea even better to our customers’ needs and optimise our product’s technical properties,” says Patrick W. Diemer, Chairman of the Executive Board at AirPlus. This makes it possible to rule out any problems upfront that would otherwise manifest themselves in the finished product and delay market introduction. The R&D team is also stepping up cooperation with partners and pilot customers.
As its first project, the R&D team is focusing on mobile payment. AirPlus has already successfully tested the prototype of its mobile payment solution Mobile AirPlus Payment on the iPhone and on cell phones with the Android operating system. The R&D team is currently working on integrating a payment solution into the prototypes. The next step is to start a pilot phase to test the solution under market conditions. Another major topic is green travel. Here, AirPlus is further expanding its solutions for organising environment-conscious business travel.
The new team is headed by 47-year-old Uli Danz, who has a degree in business administration and has been working with AirPlus for over 12 years. In his previous positions, he worked as the product manager responsible for online booking engines, travel expense accounting and the AirPlus Company Account. When it comes to developing new products, German market leader AirPlus sets store by flexibility and a situational team structure. New members from different departments and countries are continuously assigned to the team to work on the various product projects. “We do this to harness the broad international know-how of our employees for short-term inputs to new developments,” says Patrick W. Diemer. In the long term, there are further objectives: “We expect job rotation to help mainstream a culture of innovation throughout our company, also as an entrepreneurial mindset.”
Theodore is the Co-Founder and Managing Editor of TravelDailyNews Media Network; his responsibilities include business development and planning for TravelDailyNews long-term opportunities.
