Today, I want to share with you one of our best success stories of a long-term partnership, which started 8 years ago and has since become a benchmark for delivering successful projects at Dreamix.Â
Company profile:
VistaJet is a global leader in the business aviation industry, valued at more than $2.5 billion. The company has more than 73 mid-to-large-cabin, ultra-long-range Bombardier Global and Challenger business jets, and was one of Dramix’s first clients.
It has been a great opportunity to work with such a visionary company, that is disrupting the private flight industry by delivering unparalleled customer experience, wide geographical reach, and technological advancement.
VistaJet’s customers include business professionals, government officials, entrepreneurs and high ranking individuals. In order to provide a high-value service to its customers, VistaJet wanted not only to be current with the newest technologies but to stay one step ahead – to have scalable systems which would allow the company to grow rapidly and improve their level of service as their customer base grows bigger.
VistaJet’s Needs: Process and system automation
In today’s economy, especially in the airline industry, time is the most important performance indicator and depending on how you optimize it could bring you tremendous success. With the increasing number of planes owned by VistaJet, there was a need for automation of processes to ensure better time management and optimal task distribution.
Automating the slot and handling requests has always been subject to manual work, which could take several days to complete and has the potential for unintentional errors.
This was one of the first projects Dreamix worked on with VistaJet. The way we approached this task was to partner closely with Jetex, the biggest airport slot and permit provider in the world, and integrate with its platform.
As with any other project Dreamix delivers, we were communicating closely with all stakeholders involved. We relied on Scrum methodology to have a constant flow of demos delivered and to ensure that the solution served the need – to automate the slots and handling requests for VistaJet. Below you can see a graph of the integration flow we implemented with Jetex.
The next step in our partnership
The main result of this integration was that it put technology and automation in front of the necessary manual work. Tasks such as emailing and calling agents to ensure the flight has the right permit and slot secured were now automated. Having a stable, quick, and secure way to get slots and permit approval increased employee productivity so they could, instead, focus on expanding their customer and fleet base.
As our partnership with VistaJet was growing, our team was gaining more industry-specific knowledge and was able to add more value to the strategic aspect of the discussion of the project. The Flight Plan is probably the most important document for the aviation business, as it gives essential information to the pilot. The process until then was quite time-consuming and required manual coordination between different systems which triggered a higher risk of manual input mistakes. VistaJet identified a need for an automated Flight Plan.
The main difference between commercial and private flights is that you cannot plan the flight destinations too much ahead of time, as it all depends on the customer’s needs. There are situations where a customer needs to fly Miami-London and then London-Paris and then Paris-Cairo. In those cases, the company needs to quickly and efficiently meet the client’s expectations. Therefore, quick preparation of the flight plan and verified information of the route Đ°rе a must.
As the process of determining what is the most optimal route is quite a complex one, including checking for no-fly zones, meteorological conditions, FIR and others, it required logging into different systems and extracting all of the information. The combination of processes was time-consuming and prone to human errors. When you have very dynamic scheduling, one cannot afford human errors, as it might have a deep impact on the service provided, customer satisfaction and VistaJet’s revenue stream.
The solution we came up with
The way Dreamix approached this challenge was to first do extensive research on the industry standards and its benchmarks. One cannot deliver a tailor-made solution without understanding the right KPIs and the operational impact.
Once they were identified, we looked at how to translate the business needs into technical specifications. We explored the use of AWS, Kubernetes, Docker and Spring-Boot. The solution that we delivered helped compress information from those four different systems connected via microservices.
The most advanced aspect of this solution was the integration with Jeppesen which gave current flight duration estimations, meteorological conditions, fuel expenses, information about no-fly zones, taxi time and suggested which routes to reuse. All of this information was presented to the pilot two hours before the flight, giving the most current conditions and allowing the pilot enough time to prepare accordingly.
The main benefit of this solution was that it eliminated human errors, provided real-time flight information and gave the opportunity for the flight experts to focus on managing the flight rather than the code data. Moreover, the integration with Jeppesen, one of the global leaders in-flight services, was a scalable solution and would be optimal for the increasing fleet and market share of VistaJet. Those were all implementations Dreamix was able to set in place in one year.
Invoicing module system for expenses
The third successful milestone in our partnership with VistaJet is the creation of the invoicing module that Dreamix delivered. As the VistaJet fleet was increasing, the need for better operational control emerged, and we focused our efforts into developing it.
Whenever a flight is being operated by a given airport, the airport, together with all the vendors operating this flight, issue an invoice for all services provided. Including catering, service fees, ground transportation, and cleaning services, and the invoice is then sent directly to VistaJet. Until then all invoices were added manually and it was time-consuming to track the exact distribution of expenses per airport, craft and additional services. In order to optimize the process, Dreamix delivered a simple, yet very technologically advanced solution – to automatically assign invoices, issued by different airport authorities, to their respective flight and the end client.
This provided transparent costing information, better management of expenses, fuel price control and up to date information about consumer behaviour. From an operational point of view, the benefits of such an automated invoicing module resulted in an annual saving of about 7.5 years of manual work.
Delivering such successful solutions for an international company like VistaJet enabled Dreamix to position itself as a trusted IT partner that brings both deep business understanding and bespoke technical expertise.
Partnership values
Over the years, we have gained VistaJet’s trust and are seen as part of their core IT team, rather than outsourcing partners. Along with the ongoing success of our projects, there are several other aspects which make our partnership with VistaJet so successful:
- Transparency – Our team has always been transparent with our clients, keeping them informed about the status of the project and challenges. As well as presenting our ideas for further improvement. Following the Scrum methodology and having regular development and feedback meetings have proven to be a key communicational asset. We have always taken a proactive approach in our partnerships: whether it is visiting our client in Miami or Malta, meeting new colleagues, transferring our knowledge, or having a strategic alignment meeting, we see the return of such commitments.
- Consistency – The team that was created 8 years ago for VistaJet is only expanding, rather than changing. The people who were initially involved from day one are still in the same team and we believe it is a key point for success moving forward. All the business knowledge, which was accumulated over the years, stays within the team and only brings additional value to the projects.
- Culture – In one recent interview Thomas Flohr, founder and chairman of VistaJet, said that the company has “a startup mentality, but also a global mentality.” For us, being able to align culturally with the client and align our vision for work is very important. Over the years, we have been always thinking globally, keeping up to date with the newest technologies, and constantly seeking ways for improvement; but at the same time applying all this in an agile manner using innovative technologies.
Over the past 8 years, Dreamix has been delivering advanced technology solutions to our partner VistaJet. All of the development was always focused on providing a high return on their investment, applicable features and immediate and visible results.
We have proven to be a reliable partner and have created a strong partnership based on open communication, dedication and loyalty. Together with VistaJet, we think of strategic ways to use technology as a competitive advantage which provides great value to the company and gives them the freedom to expand and focus on creating a strong brand.
