KofaxCase Study

Austrian Airlines is Austria’s largest airline, offering a worldwide network of 130 destinations. This network is especially dense in Central and Eastern Europe: with 44 destinations, Austrian Airlines is the market leader in this region. Thanks to its convenient location, the airline’s “home airport” in Vienna provides an ideal link between East and West. Austrian Airlines is part of the Lufthansa Group, the largest airline network in Europe, as well as a member of the Star Alliance, the first worldwide network of international airlines.

The Hub for Communication

Kofax Communication Server in use at Austrian Airlines

The situationAustrian Airlines is Austria’s largest airline, offering a worldwide network of 130 destinations. Austrian Airlines is part of the Lufthansa Group, the largest airline network in Europe, as well as a member of the Star Alliance, the first worldwide network of international airlines.

There is a long tradition of high-powered information technology at Austrian Airlines. In 1975, an electronic reservation system called “OSCAR” was introduced in Vienna, and in April 1999, it became possible to book flights on the Internet for the first time. Communication, both internally and among all the participants in international air traffic, is an especially sensitive area for every airline. For many years, Austrian Airlines has relied on Kofax as the heart of its IT-supported communication.

The challengeAn airline that transports approximately ten million passengers, their baggage, and a large quantity of freight around the whole world each year has a very great need for communication. Internally, approximately 6,000 employees must exchange information. They include administrators, technicians in logistics and maintenance, the check-in teams, as well as the crews consisting of pilots and flight attendants. It must be possible to use a wide variety of transmission paths for communication. E-mail is very important today, of course.

However, fax and SMS messages are also important since, for example, the check-in employees can be reached this way. In addition to these standard messaging paths, there are also specific transmission protocols for aviation such as SITA (Société Internationale de Télécommunication Aéronautique), which is used primarily to exchange passenger data and information between the airline and the destination airport. Another special feature of airline communication relates to information exchange with the relevant flight security agency. In Vienna, Austrian Airlines’ “home airport,” Austro Control is responsible for security. For regulation of flight traffic, Austro Control demands detailed information before each flight and has thus, in turn, introduced its own, mandatory message format (AFTN, Aeronautical Fixed Telecommunication Network). In total,

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approximately 5.5 million messages are processed each month using SITA, AFTN, fax, and SMS.

The solutionAt the center of all these communication systems is the Kofax Communication Server™. A dozen systems cluster around this “central brain,” and Kofax must offer an interface to each of them. Kofax Communication Server ensures that messages are distributed across systems. Thus, reports from the flight-preparation and check-in system are prepared automatically so that they can be sent as SITA or AFTN messages.

Messages from the SITA network can, in turn, be transmitted to the Exchange system and delivered to employees in their Outlook mailboxes. Thanks to the connection with Exchange, Outlook becomes the central in-box for all employees: e-mails, faxes, SMS messages, as well as SITA and AFTN messages can be delivered; conversely all of these message pathways can also be addressed by Outlook.

The Kofax® technology does all of the work in the background. Employees can ignore the technology and data formats to concentrate completely on the content of their communications. Incoming “snail mail,” such as invoices and contracts, is also incorporated into the process. For this purpose, Austrian Airlines makes use of numerous multi-function devices to capture data from documents.

The advantagesIn some areas, the unified messaging approach even saves money: SITA messages no longer have to be sent using the SITA network, which represents a saving since SITA charges fees for each message. Instead of using the Telex, employees at the destination airport receive transmitted information in Outlook. However, the main advantage is surely the enormously simplified communication environment.

“Our employees can receive e-mails, SMS messages and faxes, SITA and AFTN messages at their workplace stations and send them from there; this is a considerable simplification as compared to earlier,” according to Manfred Schmiedl. “The Kofax Communication Server is the hub of our IT-supported communications.”

About KofaxKofax® plc (LSE: KFX) is a leading provider of innovative smart capture and process automation software and solutions for the business critical First MileTM of customer interactions. These begin with an organization’s systems of engagement, which generate real time, information intensive communications from customers, and provide an essential connection to their systems of record, which are typically large scale, rigid enterprise applications and repositories not easily adapted to more contemporary technology. Success in the First Mile can dramatically improve an organization’s customer experience and greatly reduce operating costs, thus driving increased competitiveness, growth and profitability. Kofax software and solutions provide a rapid return on investment to more than 20,000 customers in financial services, insurance, government, healthcare, business process outsourcing and other markets. Kofax delivers these through its own sales and service organization, and a global network of more than 800 authorized partners in more than 75 countries throughout the Americas, EMEA and Asia Pacific.

For more information, visit www.kofax.com.