Fax and SMS Services: Airline Corporation Relies on Retarus for Text Notifications

The globally operating airline corporation employs over 135,000 workers and flies to over 230 destinations. The company has the most demanding requirements for its communication with flight crews, suppliers and partners. To fulfill them, the air transport corporation relies on the fax and business SMS services provided by Retarus.

Initial Situation

A Wide Range of Requirements for Fax and Business SMS Services

At just one of its German hubs, the air transport company sends and receives 140,000 fax pages a month. Added to this, there are about as many text messages sent via business SMS services. Employees are able to send and receive fax documents and text notifications directly from and to their PCs. With the “crew fax” service, pilots and cabin staff are informed about their work schedules, and fax is also used by the airline to reserve hotel accommodation for crews all around the globe. Thanks to Retarus’ business SMS service, the crew at the hub and international destinations directly receive details or updates about flight plans or cabin staffing on their mobile phones. At the hub, 15 SAP systems generate orders, delivery schedules and order confirmations. As part of their migration to All IP and Microsoft 365, the corporation’s IT service provider decided to outsource the fax and SMS communication and discontinue the existing Kofax infrastructure.

Objective

Seamless Integration into Microsoft 365

The airline company required a future-proof solution, which would integrate seamlessly into Microsoft 365 and facilitate dependable, undisrupted fax and SMS communication around the globe within the company’s All IP environment. At the same time, the airline was aiming to optimize its operating costs and reduce efforts for aspects such as maintenance and license management. The system had to fulfill all quality and transparency requirements, have multi-client capability to allow internal cost allocation and possess the capacity for flexible scaling.

“Retarus has supported the airline’s IT service provider in smoothly setting up and operating a scalable, cloud-based solution for fax and SMS communication via Microsoft 365 and SAP. In the process, we implemented aviation-specific requirements such as the “crew fax” and complied fully with stringent quality standards.”

Alex Dosch, Senior Vice President Sales & Marketing, retarus GmbH

Challenges

Operating Flexibly Worldwide

An airline with over 230 destinations across the globe is made up of many departments and functions which rely on the company’s IT services to react flexibly to a wide variety of different scenarios. Thanks to text notifications, the airline is able to handle cancellations fast and react accordingly. If flights are cancelled or rescheduled at short notice, for instance, it is essential to notify crews of the change, rebook hotel rooms and change orders for services and supplies such as catering and fuel. Depending on the exact use case, employees utilize various fax and SMS options to handle these situations.

Retarus Products

Adapting to Specific Processes at the Airline

Retarus supports the air transport company in implementing a number of aviation-specific requirements. For example, it is possible to retract a “crew fax” that has already been released for transmission from the sending process if the flight in question has been cancelled or rescheduled. The benefit is that pilots and cabin crew are not provided with irrelevant information, allowing them to take over other flights. In this way, it is also possible to manage hotel bookings more purposefully and avoid cancelations.

Benefits

Reliable in All IP Environments

Retarus’ cloud-based fax and business SMS services also work dependably in All IP environments. The services can moreover be integrated seamlessly to send and receive text notifications via SMS and faxes from Microsoft 365 and connected with SAP systems smoothly — without difficulty via an SAP-certified interface. In this way, the airline’s IT service provider has been able to implement its All IP strategy at the first hub and free itself from its existing Kofax infrastructure, while simultaneously fulfilling the stringent quality requirements demanded in the aviation industry. The efforts expended on maintenance and license management have been eliminated and the operating costs optimized. Retarus’ services enable internal cost allocation: they have multi-client capability and can be displayed with a great degree of transparency.

Key Facts

Seamless integration into Microsoft 365
Integration into Outlook and SAP
Fulfills the most stringent quality standards
Dependable communication around the globe
Flexibel scalability, future-proof

Conclusion

Future-Proof Fax and SMS Services

In collaboration with Retarus, the airline corporation’s IT service provider has made it possible for 10,000 employees and 15 SAP systems to receive and send both fax documents and text notifications at one of the two central hubs in Germany. To this end, Retarus has provided around half of the employees with their own inbound fax numbers. The SAP systems can be reached via more than 300 fax numbers set up by Retarus. The services can be operated with a minimum of effort, integrate seamlessly into Microsoft 365, are connected to SAP via an SAP-certified interface and function free of error or trouble in the All IP environment. Retarus enables the airline’s IT service provider to meet the stringent requirements of the aviation industry, provide reliable fax and SMS services and to extend the services to other sites.

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