Cirium is the new identity for the FlightGlobal data and analytics business which combines key databases and intelligence tools for the aviation and air travel industries.
Christopher Flook, Cirium chief executive, says the revamp will allow the organisation to communicate its breadth and depth of expertise to an increasingly diverse client base. “We have been through a lot of changes in the last few years, and brought together many businesses and assets,” he says, referring to the spree of acquisitions that has seen the business more than quadruple in size in less than a decade.
The new name was chosen to deliberately steer clear of “anything that locked us into any sector”, says Flook. However, while it had to be “neutral”, Cirium has associations with “being in the cloud, being at high altitude, and working with data sets in the cloud that are always changing”. He adds: “It’s about bringing control to an industry that is constantly in motion.”
Flook: Cirium about bringing control to an industry constantly in motion
The business’s data and analytics group – including acquired businesses – FlightStats, Ascend, Diio and Innovata – and well-known products Ascend Values Analyzer, Diio Mi, Fleets Analyzer and web and mobile app FlightStats – come directly under the Cirium brand.
The FlightGlobal name continues as a distinct brand within the Cirium portfolio, comprising the aerospace publishing and conferences businesses which were key foundation stones for what is now the most powerful data, analytics and advisory force in aviation, aerospace and travel management.
A reason for the change is that FlightGlobal was too deeply associated in the industry’s mind with publishing – our flagship magazine Flight International has been in print for 110 years.
“We are proud of FlightGlobal and the FlightGlobal products,” says Flook. “But it meant we were unable to clearly position ourselves as a technology business, and put ourselves at the table automatically when customers were looking for a data and analytics solution.”
The creation of the umbrella Cirium brand will allow the business finally to realise its potential, maintains Flook. “Through our acquisitions, we have brought together industry-leading data sets, but those are often still perceived as being discrete data sets. Our new product development is about fusing these data sets into a data lake to create analytics that will solve problems in different ways,” he says. “It’s about creating a single company that draws on all these assets.”
Flook acknowledges that unveiling an entirely new name is a “challenge”, given that “the brands we have are very powerful with great reputations in their niches”. Educating customers will not “happen overnight”, he says, but “we are putting all our effort into communicating as clearly as possible what Cirium is”. The big opportunity is explaining to the industry what Cirium “represents as a group”, he says. “Nothing that our customers appreciate and value in those premium brands is being lost. It’s about more than becoming the sum of our parts.”
The reputation of some of these legacy brands is why several names will remain, not as brands but products within the Cirium portfolio. These include Diio Mi, a tool used by airlines and airports to analyse routes, and flightstats.com, the customer-facing, real-time flight-tracking service, which has more than 7 million users. Meanwhile the famous Ascend consultancy name will continue to be used in connection with the Cirium brand in the fleet valuations sector.
Back in 1909, Flight magazine, as was, produced its inky pages in a tiny, dusty office in London. Today, Cirium employs more than 400 people around the globe. The majority are technologists, data analysts, data scientists and market experts.
Their skills are essential for the sort of organic growth – “not dependent on acquisition” – Flook envisages. Strategic ties with other organisations are vital too. “We have collectively secured the best data sets, but we are always looking at further partnerships to expand on the data sets we have,” he says.
Cirium, he predicts, will become a brand that resonates with a range of customers, including airlines, OEMs and financial institutions, to metasearch and travel management companies. While the aviation sector has recognised the Flight name since 1909, Flook believes Cirium will take the wider business to the next level: “It’s a brand”, he says, “that will last us for the next 110 years.”
For more information, visit: cirium.com
Source: FlightGlobal.com
