MOXIS takes off.
Markus Pleil is Service Manager at Austrian air navigation service provider Austro Control. He and his team of internal and external employees provide the cloudbased and on-premise ICT infrastructure. If you ask him to summarise his task in one sentence, his answer is: “I am responsible to ensure that our employees can work efficiently.” And this is precisely what they have been doing with MOXIS since last year.
»MOXIS has proven to be unrivaled in its product maturity.«
Markus Pleil
Service Manager, Austro Control
Working from home as part of measures to prevent infections has gained importance for Austro Control, too. For many companies this was new ground. For Austro Control this only applied to a certain extent, since the core business, the traffic air control, is located in the overflight control centre and in the local air traffic control points. However, this preventive measure was implemented wherever possible. “The air traffic controllers take centre stage at Austro Control. We provide direct or indirect services to support the work of these highly qualified staff members,” explains Markus Pleil.
With locations at six airports throughout Austria, Austro Control has a decentralised structure. In the attempt to remain capable of action during the lockdown, attention was drawn soon to signature processes. “With the conventional analog signature processes and especially now that we are working from home, it would have been impossible to release business-critical documents such as tender documents in time,” says Markus Pleil. “Ultimately, every signature is a decision.“
A document with twelve signatures
Individual signature processes require several signatures. This means having to print and scan a lot of copies. “This cross-media conversion costs unnecessary time, valuable time you can save by working with MOXIS,” explains Markus Pleil. Occasionally, there are documents that require the signature of 12 staff members. This can take up to several weeks when using the analog method. “With MOXIS, this can be done in a single a morning.”
Today, the Service Manager is visiting the company headquarters in Vienna at the IZD-Tower to provide a “Handy-Signatur” to two managerial staff members. (This digital identity is a prerequisite in order to render a qualified electronic signature.) In his role as Registration Officer, he is also responsible to promote the digitalisation of the signing process at Austria Control and he issues the “Handy- Signatur” signature himself. “In our company, I am the digital signature in person”, says Pleil smiling. From the window in his office, you can see the rowers on the old Danube.
A sector in flux
At Austro Control, only qualified electronic signatures are used. These signatures are equivalent to handwritten signatures on documents. On one hand, these signatures are used because the majority of the documents signed with MOXIS are contracts, and on the other because this allows Markus Pleil to keep a better overview of the whole process. “It was important to me to show the benefits of qualified electronic signatures beyond a professional context,” says the Manager. According to Pleil, the fact that the added value of these useful and time saving signatures also applies to private matters, such as official applications or financial services, has spread fast.
The initiative of introducing electronic signatures to Austro Control goes hand in hand with the changes currently taking place in the whole Air Traffic Management organisation. The digitalisation, automation and providing location-independent services, but also the integration of drone technology are seen as indicators of this change by the company. With a revenue of 317.9 million euros in 2019, the company once again increased their earnings. However, in 2020 the sector had to cope with an unfavourable adjustment due to the COVID measures.
A semi-public company
The Air Traffic Management division is responsible for operative traffic control at Austro Control. The 400 traffic controllers at Austro Control ensure safe air traffic throughout Austrian airspace and in all Austrian airports. With about 200 engineers and technicians, the Austro Control Engineering Services (AES) department operates and maintains the complete ATM (Air Traffic Management) systems including all ATM systems in Austria. This includes radio and navigation systems, data transfer systems and radar stations. The semi-public company operates as a private company, but is at the same time bound to official regulations such as the Federal Procurement Act due to its public contract.
The consequence of this special condition was that XiTrust had to participate in a public tender – MOXIS outpaced the competitors. “The product maturity of MOXIS has proved to be unrivalled,” says Markus Pleil. “What really makes XiTrust strong is the balance between providing an outstanding standard product and the ability to adapt perfectly to our needs.” The manager actively participated in the configuration process of the signature requirements of Austro Control.
Markus Pleil, who has a lot of experience as a business consultant, clearly defined the expectations the company had on MOXIS in daily practice. Reducing the core function to signing, his objective is to consolidate MOXIS as the synonym for in-house eSignatures. In a first step, all signing processes at managerial level have been digitalised. Alone in January, 700 digital signatures were rendered. By the end of the first quarter in 2021 he expects that at least 1000 qualified signatures per month will be carried out via MOXIS. “It is,” says Markus Pleil, “just a matter of time until MOXIS becomes a highflier at Austro Control.”
Christoph Schomberg, Senior Editor at XiTrust
