Airlines are one of many organisations in the transport industry that are keen to keep up with new and emerging technologies - both passenger-facing and internal. One of the most important technologies airlines should already be embracing is the digitisation of their OEM manuals and other documentation.
After all, why carry a plane-load of documents around for every flight when you can simply access them at your fingertips at the touch of a button or search bar? Having your airline's documents available in the cloud can have several benefits including:
- Saving money on aircraft fuel due to cutting down on paper manuals
- Saving on man-hours needed to upkeep, update and distribute documents
- Saving time by being able to meet regulatory and audit deadlines and keep abreast of other organisational duties
In addition to this, when your organisation employs the use of the cloud, it's a surefire way to help your airline operations in the three following ways:
1. Improving Connectivity
A document management system can greatly improve how employees within an airline will be able to handle and process their documents on a day-to-day basis. Some of the benefits of improved connectivity will mean that operations can continue to be carried out on a real-time basis no matter where you are in the world. That means less time waiting for changes and updates to be made, thereby making operations much smoother.
2. Seamless Publication
Authorised users in the cockpit or cabin can view, make changes and highlight revisions and updates at their fingertips when required. Any suggested updates can then be reviewed, authorised and ultimately published across a number of different devices and platforms easily and seamlessly.
As well as delivering an instant search to any word in any manual across your document library, a good document management system will allow you to make specific annotations to documents that can be seen instantly by relevant employees and are resilient to any updates of the software - meaning the annotations will be retained until they are amended or deleted by a user.
The beauty of being able to publish seamlessly using a cloud-based distribution, archiving and publishing system cuts out the need to rifle through paper documents, make changes and then have your in-house team implement those changes and print new documents or even attempt to send out digital copies to all relevant airline employees - which is a process that can take weeks or months to complete. Another benefit of using this type of system is that you can see who is reading what and whether they have the most up-to-date copy of a manual.
3. On-Demand Access
Imagine a world where employees across your airline's organisation will be able to easily access the right documents at the right time when needed. Whether on the ground or in the air or in another destination half-way across the world. With a document management system, this exists!
It certainly does away with the stress of looking through a multitude of platforms or paper documents (and as you know, there are a lot of them) and instead, gives your employees the opportunity to simply search for the document they need and receive instant access with ease.
Conclusion
Using a document management system for your airline is certainly a great starting point for moving your operations forward. Technology is an incredibly fast-moving industry, from AI integrations to newly created avionics and passenger-facing apps, so now is the time to get on board if you want to keep your organisation at the forefront of your industry. By implementing the use of a document management system for your employees, you'll quickly be able to see that they will be able to utilise their time and resources more effectively and efficiently - saving your airline money and headaches in the process.
