Author: Josephine Courant

One Sunday in February each year, two teams battle for the ultimate prize in professional sports: the Lombardi Trophy. On February 2, 2020, over 60,000 screaming fans witnessed the Kansas City Chiefs defeat the San Francisco 49ers to take home their second Super Bowl title. While the stakes were high for the teams on the field, they were equally high for the off-the-field team tasked with providing the fans – and 100 million viewers at home – with a safe and memorable Super Bowl experience.

Every part of Super Bowl Sunday is meticulously planned and staffed. While the teams on the field include 53 players and a few dozen coaches, trainers and front office staff, the team off the field includes thousands of parking attendants, security guards, concessionaires, ushers, ticket takers, and other stadium personnel. While largely unnoticed and unseen, this crew works tirelessly to ensure a smooth, safe and seamless operation before, during and after the game.

Outside the stadium, hundreds of team members provide guests with seamless entry and exit to the stadium. These unsung heroes assist the elderly and mobility-impaired by providing wheelchair assistance and golf carts rides. For Super Bowl LIV, this group was led by SP+ Gameday, an elite event management company that supports some of the nation’s highest profile sporting events like the Super Bowl and Kentucky Derby. Called upon to amass an army of team members to support a one-day event, the Gameday team excels at delivering a world class experience for a discerning gameday clientele.

To support Super Bowl LIV, Gameday searched for a software partner to help power its operation. Given time is of the essence at a Super Bowl, it’s critical that team members pushing wheelchairs and driving carts timely assist fans to and from their vehicles, and transport them to lounges, concessions, seats and suites. Keeping track of guest needs, team member activity and job completion is a complex operation. That’s why, in preparation for Super Bowl Sunday, Gameday approached Springshot looking for a solution to support these services.

In mid-2019, after attending a demo highlighting Springshot’s capabilities, Gameday chose Springshot as its technology partner. Showcasing its ability to easily configure the Springshot platform to meet the custom needs of any event, the Springshot team modified the web interface and mobile application to meet the special needs of a football game at Hard Rock Stadium. Down to the smallest detail, including a football-themed design configuration for the Gameday attendants, Springshot looked and felt like a custom-built Super Bowl application.

During game week, the Gameday team was not alone. Two members of Springshot’s Customer Success team worked onsite to support the operation. While in South Florida, they revised workflows and interface settings on the fly, trained Gameday’s managers and staff, and worked closely with the Gameday team to prepare for the event. At the last minute, they even helped configure Springshot to support a VIP party at a South Beach hotel a few nights before the game.

With Springshot’s support, the SP+ Gameday team executed flawlessly on Super Bowl Sunday. That morning, attendants arrived for a brief refresher course on how to accept and perform missions on the Springshot app, which they had downloaded via the app stores for their Android and iOS devices. As guests began arriving for the game, Gameday’s dispatchers easily assigned missions, tracked the attendants and cart drivers on Springhsot’s interactive map, and made sure the right people were assisted at the right time. By making complex operations easily digestible in a single user interface, Springshot gave dispatchers visibility into every minute of activity.

Springshot’s data analytics also carried the day. Given Springshot configured the Super Bowl mobile workflows to capture where guests sat during the game, Springshot was able to deliver reports after halftime that allowed dispatchers to strategically position attendants for as speedy exit following the game. Following the game, Springshot also delivered reports that identified how many miles each attendant traveled during the game and where they were positioned during the fourth quarter. Springshot and Gameday continue mining the data from Super Bowl LIV to tweak and optimize performance for future events.

Springshot looks forward to a great relationship with its new partner. While the Chiefs may have emerged victorious on the field at Super Bowl LIV, SP+ Gameday clearly emerged the off-the-field champion.

Swissport is the world’s largest aviation service provider. Over the last 25 years, the Zurich-based company has supported the world’s leading airlines at over 300 airports worldwide. Swissport has always been at the forefront of innovation. By providing specialized ramp, passenger and cargo support to its aviation partners, it works continuously to enhance and optimize airport operations.

Swissport is focused on optimizing the aircraft turn process. In an effort to minimize the time an aircraft remains parked at the gate, the company’s Innovations Team recently embarked on an initiative to standardize turn workflows across Swissport’s global network. As part of this program, Swissport entered into a partnership with Springshot. The companies are now working together in Larnaca to turn this vision into reality.

Larnaca International Airport (LCA) is the largest commercial airport in Cyprus. Built in 1974, LCA now serves over five million passengers per year. After a major renovation, operations were upgraded to meet increasing demand, with an expected nine million annual passengers over the next few years. Swissport selected LCA for the initial Springshot deployment given its innovative local management team and highly-capable frontline crew.

Swissport chose the LCA ramp team for the first deployment. Ramp agents are critical to the aircraft turn process. From supporting baggage movement, servicing lavatories and many other “below wing” tasks, ramp agents must work in concert to service the aircraft. A well-choregraphed ramp team ensures flights leave safe and on time.

Swissport is focused on helping its ramp agents better coordinate and collaborate with the allocators who oversee the ramp operation. Prior to Springshot, allocators built the ramp schedules manually using paper and spreadsheets, requiring up to four hours each day to build the next day’s schedules. To make matters worse, given the impact of weather and other irregularities on an airport operation, these schedules were often outdated when the allocators arrived at the airport the next morning. This forced them to tweak the spreadsheets schedules on the fly, requiring additional effort and minimizing their effectiveness.

Springshot replaced these manual processes. After integrating with Swissport’s internal systems, Springshot helped automate the entire scheduling process. Today, allocators can create schedules in advance, send daily tasks to ramp agents’ mobile devices, and see when they are starting and ending their shifts. Using their mobile devices, ramp employees communicate easily through the Springshot app while checking off tasks throughout the day. In the event of flight delays or other operational issues, tasks and schedules adjust automatically in Springshot, alleviating hours of manual work.

Thanks to Springshot, Swissport allocators and ramp agents have visibility into—and control over—their entire shift. They have more time to plan, yielding quicker reactions and smoother operations. Given Springshot reduces unnecessary telephone calls and texts, ramp agents are also able to communicate more effectively. Most important, they are happier and more productive.

And off we go. Over the coming months, Swissport and Springshot plan to repeat this success across Swissport’s operations in South Korea and Japan. Stay tuned.

For a number of us, smartphones are just a way of life. They’re how we check email, navigate directions or look up answers to life’s ever-important questions. However, some people prefer to only use their phones as one thing: a phone!

That’s the case for many of the workers who are servicing the aircraft and transferring the luggage that passengers need to reach their final destinations. At Springshot, we’ve made it our mission to make their lives easier by using technology to empower and enable them as they go throughout their workdays, which is why we embarked on a journey to streamline the Springshot user experience.

As a result of these efforts, we are so pleased to announce that the new user interface received an Honorable Mention at the UX Awards. The UX Awards recognize the leaders in the digital world who are designing products and experiences that solve real-life challenges, and winners are named by a panel of judges. Brian Braunlich, our Product Manager, was on hand at the UX Awards Summit on November 9th in Palo Alto to give a presentation about Springshot, and Tan Ma, our amazing designer, was there to formally accept the award.

When we started the redesign of the user interface, we went straight to the source: the teams who are using our app every single day. Some employees are smartphone savvy while others are less familiar with this type of technology, and we needed to create an intuitive experience that would accommodate all levels of experience. Our team followed these users through a typical day and asked questions to better understand what they need, want and what motivates them to do a great job. We saw how they used the Springshot app and gathered feedback about the things they loved and the things they wished would change.

After our days in the field, we took that information back to our headquarters and, led by Tan, we began the process of setting goals so we could deliver on expectations. Built on the premise of being useful, usable and beautiful, the new Springshot interface allows our users to flow seamlessly through their workdays, cutting down the time and steps it takes to complete a task by as much as 50 percent.

With the new user interface, we are empowering travel industry workers like never before, and we are thrilled that the UX Awards recognized for our efforts to make Springshot better than ever.

Mark Pantilon travels light. He knows his way around airports—every other week, he heads to SFO for work-related travel, zipping through security without hassle. And for years, he worked in Cabin Service for Air Serv in the very same airport.

On the outside, Mark embodies professionalism. At 25, he was the youngest manager in charge of more than 100 employees and was tasked with turning his team’s reputation around. He got the job done by rallying the crew, showing them his vision and, above all, expressing gratitude to his colleagues.

Between shopping dates and partnering up for mud-crawling, bar-hanging, rope-swinging obstacle races, Janelle keeps Mark on his toes. As a young father, Mark learned to dedicate time, patience and understanding in developing his relationship with Janelle after some dark years with his own father.

Growing up, Mark and his two younger sisters were confronted with their father’s struggle with addiction. Mark’s stable and comfortable life in San Jose took an unexpected turn at 16 when his father lost his job, leaving the weight of their family on his mother’s shoulders. Mark’s family weathered a hurricane as they watched their father’s life unravel.

Mark held this close to him and promised to never let it become an excuse for wasting time. At 18, he began working for Air Serv where he met Doug Kreuzkamp, who has been a mentor to Mark for almost a decade. As a VP of Air Serv at the time, Doug nurtured Mark through the sometimes unpredictable obstacles of navigating a new career. Their relationship, however, was never contingent on hierarchy or hours at a desk.

On his 21st birthday, Mark was on his way to a meeting in San Diego that was cancelled last-minute. Unsure of how to spend the next few days in an unfamiliar city, Mark called Doug and explained the situation. Should he turn around and go back? “You just turned 21, right?” Doug asked. “Head out to town, have fun and enjoy yourself!”

Mark took a lot from Doug’s example. The trust and gratitude given to him influenced the way he would treat his own team one day, and as serendipity would decide, he discovered his favorite city, San Diego, for the first time.

In the shadows of his troubled family life, Mark faced the situation head-on and rose above it. The anger that was once inside of him transformed into a healthy and determined focus over the years, driving him to become a better son, brother and father. Between his colleagues and daughter, Mark is determined to brighten and enhance the lives around him.

And people clearly love working with him. By the time Mark is done visiting with new customers for Springshot launches, he knows nearly every employee’s name.

Mark knows from personal experience that compassion is key to earning people’s trust and raising morale, and that a “thank you” or “great job” goes a long way. He feels it’s his responsibility to be a leader people can look up to and to pass along the goodwill that was extended to him by Doug and others.

Now at 28 years old, Mark looks ahead to his future with his family. He plans on taking his daughter back to the Philippines, where he was born, and hopes to one day move to San Diego. But before all of that, he and Janelle have another obstacle race to get ready for. In some ways, he’s been preparing for it all his life.