ACH Reduces Annual Spending by 15 Percent with AEM Corporation on AWS

Airlines Clearing House (ACH) administers and implements financial settlements between over 900 airlines, airports, and aviation industry entities. In 2021, ACH facilitated over $8B in settlements. To help streamline the flow of information and funds to its customers, ACH onboarded AEM Corporation, AWS Partner, to consolidate its nine databases into one and develop SMART, its real-time settlement processing solution. As a result, the company experienced a substantial decline in annual spending.

The settlement processing solution at Airlines Clearing House (ACH) required nine disparate databases for financial transactions and related tasks. The technology to support this solution came from a variety of vendors and still entailed time-consuming manual processes that posed a risk to the accuracy and timeliness of settlements and increased the possibility of errors and out-of-sync processes.

To reduce redundancy, centralize control, and optimize the accuracy and timeliness of transactions, the leadership at ACH needed to consolidate their nine databases into one. With a vendor contract nearing expiration, ACH took the opportunity to streamline their settlement processing system with a new solution.

To address this, ACH leaders turned to AWS Partner, AEM Corporation, after a recommendation from their partner ATPCO. The company implemented a serverless solution that could streamline the ACH settlement processes and enhance functionality by integrating their databases into one. The SMART solution has been designed with a core engine that makes it highly agile and easily adaptable to various settlement processes and scenarios without significant configuration and offers increased visibility into settlement processes.

With AEM Corporation, ACH met a challenging deadline and successfully went live with their new integrated database in 15 months. As a result of the new settlement solution, ACH was able to renegotiate a vendor contract and reduce its annual expenses by 15 percent.

The new solution included an easy-to-follow workflow allowing new ACH team members to quickly adapt and become productive. It has also increased their controls to ensure the accuracy of transactions at scale. Lori Tully Secretary Treasurer at Airlines Clearing House, elaborates on the value of the new solution, “As a company in finance, the key to our success with this new solution are the automation and the controls it supports."

The AEM Corporation solution helped ACH optimize functionality with additional tools. The new, single database at ACH streamlines operations and supports accuracy by guiding team members through their workday. AEM Corporation integrated a workflow into the system that provides ACH team members with a daily task list. Once completed, the tasks disappear from the list. This task management platform has significantly streamlined the onboarding and training process for new hires. The solution also included an internal communication center that made it easier to track and securely exchange information across the organization. Tully explains, “We track and carry out all communication quickly and seamlessly. All within one centralized database. It’s a full package.”

From task management to streamlined communication and more accurate settlement processing, the new ACH database holistically enhanced the company's internal and external operations. Several AWS services are crucial to the design, implementation and maintenance of this solution. Because the solution is APIdriven and web-based, Amazon API Gateway and AWS Lambda figured prominently as part of the core processing engine. As a solution for settlement processing, it required capabilities that could support the consumption of files from various sources, significant data storage, and optimal auditability. This made Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) integral to the ACH solution.

AEM Corporation Executive Director Kent Eudy speaks further on the important role of AWS services in the architecture of this solution, especially concerning adherence to service level agreements (SLAs) with Amazon Relational Database (Amazon RDS): “Amazon RDS supports the multi-region replicated nature of the application—ensuring that the system is up 24/7."

ACH plans to continue working with AEM Corporation.