…Stakeholders Commend Total Marketing Strategies
An aviation expert, Mr Adewale Sanni on Thursday urged oil marketing companies to institute trackers in the monitoring of trucks with a view to checking products diversion and other unethical practices.
Sanni, who is the Country Station Manager of Lufthansa, gave the advice at the Total Nigeria Plc Africa Customers Week in Lagos.
Sanni, who was the guest speaker at the event, spoke on: “Aviation Fuelling Challenges- Special Focus on Nigerian Market’’.
He said that introduction of automated trucking on haulage was in line with international best practices rather than the manual monitoring of trucks.
According to him, this is meant “to standardise and regulate the process of transportation of petroleum through tracking of trucks using available best practices in the aviation industry.
“Tracking system should be embraced; fuel haulage should be tracked at any time through an App. We are still doing manual tracking rather than automated.
“Airlines are the lifeblood of the aviation market. When airlines succeed and prosper, the rest of the markets prosper.
“Over the past decade, as the global economy has improved, airlines have grown in profitability, matured in terms of employing better capacity management and cost controls years,’’ he said.
Sanni said that in airline business, passenger travel continues to grow above the long-term ten-year average of 5.5 per cent.
He said the latest Economic Performance of the airlines industry report from the International Air Transport Association (IATA), has shown a sight cooling in passenger demand.
“In 2018, demand measured in revenue per kilometer grew by 6.5 per cent, down from 8.0 per cent growth in 2017.
“IATA expects passenger demands to drop to 6.0 per cent growth in 2019. Capacity measured in available seat kilometers rose by 6.0 per cent in 2018 compared to 6.6 per cent in 2017, with predictions for 5.8 per cent growth in 2019.
“Passenger load factors have therefore continued their slight upward trend from 81.5 per cent in 2017 to 81.9 per cent in 2018 and are forecast to reach 82.1 per cent in 2019,’’ he added.
Sanni, however, urged oil marketing companies to embraced modern automated invoicing system approach in the aviation industry than invoicing manually.
He advised oil marketing companies to imbibe international best practices on automated invoicing system, adding that this would help in fast tracing payment process rather than sending invoices to airline annually.
According to him, Total should embrace the model and get the App to commence on automated invoicing to reduce manual invoicing.
“You have the resources and facility because that what we should be promoting in the aviation industry,’’ he said.
Also, the Managing Director of Aero Contractors, Capt. Ado Sanusi urged Total downstream to be more strategic and goal driven toward customers’ satisfaction and to always put customers first at the front their business.
Sanusi made a presentation on “ Operational Excellence in Airline Operation-A Focus on Customer Centricity’’.
He commended the management of Total Nigeria Plc for their effective customer service delivery, adding that true customer-centric organisations identify their most valuable customers and ensure their satisfaction.
“In order to do this, organisations gather customer data from multiple sources and channels and target their most profitable customers with relevant offers at the right time.
“Customer-centric is an approach to doing business that focuses on providing a positive customer experience both at the point of sale and after the sale in order to drive profit and gain competitive advantage, which Total is doing to us.
“Another potential benefit of a customer-centric business strategy is that it can increase customer satisfaction.
“The purpose of customer-centricity is to find out what customers like and don’t like, and to tailor products and services to better fulfill those needs,’’ he said.
In his remarks, Mr Imrane Barry, Managing Director, Total Nigeria Plc, commended the aviation operators for surviving the business in spite of huge challenges in the industry.
Barry said that the “Africa Customers Week’’ became necessary to appreciate stakeholders and valued customers for consistence patronage.
According to him, Total is the only International Oil Company in the downstream sector in Nigeria because the group firmly believes in the country.
“We believe in Africa.
“The beauty is that we are a medium enterprise and for such an organisation, it is important to be deeply rooted in the country where you are located.
“Clarity, priority and focus is important in business. It is extremely important to know why we are doing something. It is important to set up our priority and stick to them,’’ Barry said.
