About ACE for Unions
ACE for Unions was an enterprise SaaS application built by 5S Technology—a California-based startup founded by ex-military pilots, and defense industry vets—for the Delta Air Lines pilots union. It was built to replace the union’s contract violation reporting system used by 11,000+ pilots.
Who the users were
There were two main groups to look after:
- Pilots filing reports
- Union admins processing reports
Prior to ACE, when a pilot experienced what they thought might be a contract violation on a flight, in a hotel, or on their paycheck, they used a simple web form that captured basic info, the pilot’s description, and any images they wanted to include. Once submitted, reports were sent to the union via email.
Union admins would converse with the pilots via email to determine if a violation had actually occurred. If one had, the admin would file a claim with the company (Delta Air Lines) and the pilot would be reimbursed on a later paycheck.
How the union’s original system could have been better
The initial interface for pilots was passable but converting reports to email forced union admins to manage their entire workload in email. Email may have been a simple solution but it has issues:
- The longer the email chain, the harder it is to find information from previous emails, etc.
- The more email you produce, the less effective search becomes
- Managers can’t easily see how much workload their admins are under
- Most importantly, it squandered the opportunity to structure and collect the incoming report data to be easily analyzed and acted upon
Overall results
When ACE for Unions launched, pilots used it so much that it caused a backlog of reports for the union that took nearly a year to work through. This wasn’t an ideal outcome for the union but it clearly indicated demand for the product from our primary user group. We consistently received high marks from pilots, whose #1 complaint was that their reports weren’t being acted on fast enough.
For admins, our online tools gave them a clear picture of the backlog, a sortable / filterable list of reports & claims, and a reliable workflow from unprocessed pilot report to a validated and submitted claim to the company. We also collected data on the results of the claims, which fed back to the pilots on their mobile apps.