Reflections from the SAP Airline Innovation Summit at American Airlines HQ
By Vijey Rajendran CEO, Mobolutions
Last week at the SAP Airline Innovation Summit, held at American Airlines’ impressive Skyview campus in Fort Worth, one message came through louder than any keynote, panel, or demo:
The future airline will run on real-time financial accuracy, modern retailing, and new monetization models, and SAP BRIM is emerging as the backbone to make that possible.
You wouldn’t see “BRIM” splashed across the banners, but for anyone who understands how airlines really operate massive partner ecosystems, complex revenue flows, subscriptions, memberships, multi-entity accounting, credit-card settlement, cargo, retailing the entire conference was one long confirmation that BRIM is the hidden engine powering the next generation of aviation finance.
IATA One Order Accounting Certification: A Landmark Shift Powered by BRIM (CI + FI-CA)
One of the most important sessions was SAP’s walkthrough of its solution for Order Accounting and Settlement Transformation, including the IATA One Order Accounting certified process.
And here’s the part that most attendees didn’t fully realize:
SAP achieved IATA One Order Accounting Certification on top of SAP BRIM’s Convergent Invoicing and FI-CA.
This is a big deal.
IATA’s One Order initiative standardizes how airlines capture, account for, and settle orders across partners, codeshares, payment providers, ancillaries, and modern retailing channels. The accounting model requires:
- Event-driven processing
- Partner settlement
- High-volumes
- Credit-card reconciliation
- Error handling
- Sub-ledger discipline
- Real-time financial posting
There is no product in the SAP portfolio better suited to that than BRIM which has solved these exact patterns for telco, media, energy, transportation, and financial services for more than a decade.
What the event demonstrated is that airlines now need those same capabilities, right inside their core finance landscape.
Demo Deep Dive: Every Session Was BRIM in Disguise
A quick look at the Tuesday afternoon lineup:
Order Accounting End-to-End Demo
→ Powered by CI + FI-CA.
Credit Card Reconciliation Demo
→ Classic FI-CA settlement and reconciliation patterns.
Subscription Order Management Demo
→ 100% driven by SAP SOM (BRIM’s subscription engine).
Data Analytics and Reporting using IATA order-data feed
→ BRIM’s event architecture mapped into airline retailing and revenue flows.
These weren’t “adjacent” to BRIM.
They were BRIM. Full stop.
Just applied to one of the most operationally complex industries in the world.
Why Airlines Care: Diversification & New Revenue Models
Another fascinating theme came from the customers in the room:
✦ Lufthansa
Already a successful BRIM customer – not for flight revenue, but for Lufthansa AirPlus, their global provider of business travel payment solutions for corporations.
✦ Southwest
Uses BRIM for Southwest Vacations, handling packaged travel, ancillaries, and multi-party settlement.
✦ Air Canada
Recently purchased BRIM; their session on cloud transformation (with IBM) made it clear they see SAP as the future foundation of their financial engine.
Notice the pattern:
Airlines are becoming multi-business enterprises.
They need platforms that can handle loyalty, cargo, travel bundles, financial services, subscriptions, lounges, memberships, digital retailing, not just ticketing.
BRIM is already proven in these revenue-dense, partner-heavy, recurring-billing domains.
The takeaway is clear:
The fastest path to becoming a modern digital airline runs directly through the BRIM architecture.
AI & Joule: The Airline CFO’s New Co-Pilot
As expected, AI took center stage from BCG’s “AI First Airline” to SAP’s Joule showcase to IBM/KPMG panels.
But what became obvious is that AI without clean, granular financial events is just analytics theater.
To operationalize AI for:
- Route profitability
- Ancillary optimization
- Partner settlement
- Fare/pricing intelligence
- Real-time revenue leakage detection
You need transaction-level accuracy, event consistency, and scalable subledger processing.
Which means:
AI for airlines depends on BRIM-grade financial architecture.
Airlines Are Ready: the Industry Just Needed Proof
What the event revealed is that SAP and its partners finally demonstrated something airlines have been waiting for:
A standardized, certified, financially correct way to run:
- Order-to-cash
- Settlement
- Subscription products
- Multi-party revenue models
- Loyalty monetization
- Ancillary bundles
- Modern retailing flows
- IATA One Order accounting
all within a single SAP architecture.
It’s not hypothetical anymore.
It’s not a slideware vision.
It’s real, it’s certified, and SAP showcased it live.
Why Mobolutions Is the Partner Airlines Have Been Missing
As Mobolutions’ CEO, attending this summit reinforced a truth that we have been living for years:
BRIM expertise is the missing link between where airlines are today and where the industry is clearly heading.
Most SIs talk ERP.
A few talk retailing.
Almost none understand real-time revenue platforms.
Airlines don’t just need a system integrator – they need a Q2C monetization specialist who can:
- Implement CI + FI-CA at airline scale
- Design subscription & ancillary revenue models
- Build partner-settlement processes
- Map airline events to BRIM events
- Integrate IATA accounting into S/4
- Stabilize revenue operations (where most SI programs fail)
- Bring AI use cases to life on top of validated financial event data
- Move airlines toward cloud, clean core, and modular monetization
This is why airlines like Lufthansa, Southwest and Air Canada have already bet on BRIM in parts of their business.
And it’s why Mobolutions is ready to help the rest of the industry make that leap – not someday, but right now.
Final Thought
The SAP Airline Innovation Summit didn’t just showcase demos.
It showcased direction.
The global airline industry is about to shift from complex, disjointed revenue systems to:
One Order
One Subledger
One Settlement Engine
One Revenue Platform
and that platform is BRIM.
For airlines ready to modernize finance, transform retailing, launch new revenue streams, or prepare for AI-driven operations:
Mobolutions is the partner built for this exact moment.
Let’s build the next generation digital airline together.
