Yield management system
the structure of a revenue management system, and the way it works. A Yield management system calculates and updates the booking limits within a reservation system. The RM system goes through four steps:
1) Data Collection: Companies using revenue management have to store their historical data of customer behavior, prices, demand and other factors in order to make good forecasting and estimation. This is the foundation of all yield management systems. The more precisely we can store our historical data, the more precise forecast we can make.
2) Forecasting and estimation: During this step we have to estimate the parameters of our model, and after that we have to make predictions using these parameters. Sometimes companies not only forecast demand, but no-shows, or cancellations too. As data is the basis of forecasting, so is forecasting the basis of optimization. Without a good prediction of demand, no-shows, customer behavior, etc. we cannot optimize the controls.
3) Optimization: We have to find the optimal set of controls, which we are going to use. These can be booking limits, prices, discounts, etc.
4) Control: The final step is to control the sale of inventory using the previously optimized controls.