Survey
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
NAVITAIRE CASE STUDY | NAVITAIRE RAIL At the Heart of Innovation: Navitaire Rail Powers a Revolutionary Rail Company NAVITAIRE CASE STUDY | NAVITAIRE RAIL Rail has always has been a popular way to travel in Europe. The vast rail network stretching across the continent provides vital connections among major cities, towns and villages from Copenhagen to Naples, Lisbon to Prague, and thousands of points in between. Each year, hundreds of millions of passengers in Europe rely on trains to take them to meet business clients, on holiday, or to visit friends and loved ones both near and far. One of the leading operators in the European rail system — which has more than US $25 billion in annual revenue, 180,000 employees, and millions of passengers — has a proud history of innovation that has kept it on the forefront of European travel for decades. However, in the early years of the new millennium, storm clouds were forming on the horizon. The emergence of low-cost airlines was forecast to accelerate dramatically in coming years — ultimately claiming nearly one-third of air travel in Europe. With their low prices, fast travel times, and technology-driven customer experiences, these airlines would pose a significant competitive threat to traditional rail companies such as this operator. In addition, as part of its move toward becoming a more integrated bloc, the European Union announced that all long-distance passenger rail services within the EU would be deregulated. While this move would open up opportunities for the operator to provide service to new markets outside its own country, it also could make the company’s domination of its home market vulnerable to other countries’ rail services. In light of these developments, the company saw an opportunity to launch a new, highspeed, low-cost rail brand specifically designed to compete with low-price airlines. To fulfill this mission, this new brand would need to match these airlines on price, service, and the overall customer experience — attracting and retaining a new generation of rail customers in the process. The embodiment of this new brand was created via a new subsidiary designed to emulate — and ultimately surpass — the ease with which airline customers could plan their trips, choose seats, and pay for their travel online. This capability stood in stark contrast to the typical experience of a rail traveler, which often involved long waits, complicated trip planning, and other hassles. In addition to streamlining trip planning and providing a more up-to-date customer experience, the new subsidiary was built to achieve cost advantages over the traditional rail distribution model by improving customer self-service capabilities and reducing the cost of ticket sales and distribution. The Search For a Solution While developing the concept of this new brand, executives quickly recognized that a key to its success would be its underlying technology infrastructure. In particular, the company needed a solution that could provide a cutting-edge, Internet-enabled customer experience that would minimize the need for human intervention, as well as simplify and speed up the customer buying process. The question was, which solution met these key criteria? The answer was found in the skies, from where the original inspiration for the brand had come. Many of the low-cost airlines that the company sought to emulate were using New Skies®, a leading travel reservation system from Navitaire. While this system was designed www.navitaire.com 2 NAVITAIRE CASE STUDY | NAVITAIRE RAIL specifically for use by airlines, company executives saw its potential application to rail service and approached Navitaire for help with tailoring the solution to fit its needs. Working closely with Navitaire, the company used the Navitaire core reservations system’s Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to optimize the platform for its rail business model. The resulting system was designed to achieve the new rail company’s goals of cost-effectively providing customers with an experience suitable for one of Europe’s first high-speed, low-price rail companies. In fact, the Navitaire reservation solution was instrumental to the very thing that differentiated this new brand from traditional rail companies: fast, modern, convenient and affordable service on the customer’s terms. Over the years, both market dynamics and Navitaire’s technological capabilities have continued to evolve. The younger travelers who have embraced the brand’s value proposition have become even more demanding of a satisfying customer experience that can be managed online and via mobile devices, and want access to other services that can make travel more enjoyable. Plus, the speed with which new innovations must be brought to market to meet customer needs has quickened considerably, thus requiring the company’s operations to be even more nimble and flexible. Navitaire's next-generation reservation system for rail — dubbed Navitaire Rail, based on its advanced airline platform New Skies — is designed to help leading rail companies keep up with these demands. The Core of an Innovative Business Navitaire Rail is at the very core of the railway’s marketing, selling, and customer relationship processes, and serves as the foundation for its ongoing growth and evolution. Navitaire Rail is the central integration point for several critical business processes, including sales, distribution, virtual ticketing, and payments. In addition, Navitaire Rail features APIs that make it easier for new ticket distributors and travel service providers to closely integrate their operations with the company. This, in turn, allows the operator to continually expand the channels through which it can sell tickets and the ways in which it can better serve passengers. This is just one of several innovative capabilities that Navitaire Rail has enabled the company to develop, and that support the entire customer experience. Another example: distinct customer environments that travelers can select based on their needs and preferences. The company offers three such environments, tailored to the relative degree of quiet or entertainment the traveler desires. For instance, customers can choose an interactive, social environment including in-seat food service, the ability to interact with each other via social networking prior to or during trips, and games for children. Those who prefer a more sedate experience can choose another environment that enables them to sleep or work during their trip. A third environment enables the railway to optimize train utilization in off-peak times and is offered only at night. Travelers who select this environment are treated to on-train entertainment that includes live performances by celebrities, dancing and a party atmosphere. www.navitaire.com 3 NAVITAIRE CASE STUDY | NAVITAIRE RAIL These distinct customer environments are designed to help overcome what the railway has identified as one of its biggest obstacles to competing with airlines: longer travel times. Indeed, while its trains run at more than 300 kilometers per hour and can go between major destinations in only three hours, an airliner can make the same trip in one hour. Providing different customer environments enables the operator to “add value” to this extended travel time — and the company’s research has shown that their availability has measurably raised European consumers’ expectations for travel. More Choices, More Revenue and More Profit Navitaire Rail is instrumental to the provision of these environments. The system allows customers to choose the desired environment during the reservation process, and then further customize their experience by choosing specific seats based on seat attributes (such as whether it is forward- or backward-facing, or a window or aisle seat) and purchasing additional ancillary services such as DVD rentals or tickets to on-train concerts. In addition, Navitaire Rail allows the company to easily vary the ancillary items for sale by market — for instance, it can sell tickets to major art exhibitions or other events planned in destination cities. Navitaire Rail’s exclusive Seating capabilities enable the railway to market unique seat characteristics such as seat size, power outlet access, or near-table to further enhance customers’ travel experience. And reflecting the growing number of ways in which customers like to pay for travel, Navitaire Rail allows a wide variety of payment methods, including credit cards, gift certificates, travel passes, customer credit and vouchers. The end result: Customers are attracted to and retained by experiences tailored to their specific preferences, and the operator has an enhanced ability to sell greater volumes of profitable ancillary services. Once the traveler’s purchase has been completed, Navitaire Rail enables the ticketing process to be completely virtual. The system provides each customer with a twodimensional barcode that can be scanned by train conductors’ mobile devices — whether the barcode has been printed or is simply displayed on the screen of the customer’s phone. Beyond eliminating the need to retain a piece of paper while traveling, Navitaire Rail also allows conductors to change a customer’s environment or seat assignment, view seating maps and passenger lists, and sell ancillary services and amenities before and after the train leaves the station — all with their mobile devices. And perhaps one of the biggest benefits of the passenger itinerary barcode is that travelers do not have to wait in queues at the ticket office desks, kiosks or stations. Instead, they head straight for the platform and board their trains. Operationally, Navitaire Rail is a managed service provided by Navitaire. Thus, the railway has gained access to these capabilities without the overhead and resource commitments required to purchase, develop, and maintain their own system. Furthermore, Navitaire’s community software model allows the operator to benefit from ongoing system improvements and enhancements driven by other Navitaire reservations customers, including more than 50 airlines. The shared reservations platform provides synergistic value to rail and airline customers, which also could be extended to other modes of transportation (such as buses and ferries) in the future. www.navitaire.com 4 NAVITAIRE CASE STUDY | NAVITAIRE RAIL Using Customer Data to Build Loyalty One of the keys to providing world-class service is being able to retain and use information about customers and their preferences and experiences. Doing so allows a company to tailor the service it provides to the individual wants and needs of each customer, boosting their loyalty in the process. However, for many rail companies and airlines, this information is kept in siloed databases that lack integration with each other and prevent an holistic view of the customer. Navitaire Rail’s Online Data Store (ODS) allows the railway to overcome this challenge. The ODS gathers and organizes data regarding each customer’s end-to-end experience and then makes that data readily available to front-line customer service personnel. As an example, if a customer or a group of customers experience a delay while travelling aboard one of the company’s trains, Navitaire Rail allows back-office staff to proactively identify them and offer a travel voucher or other compensation. In addition, the system can be used to provide customers with gifts or special services in recognition of important events such as birthdays. In sum, Navitaire Rail’s ODS allows the company to take a more sophisticated approach to collecting and utilizing customer data, boosting customer loyalty in the process. Conclusion By all accounts, this new brand has been a major success for its parent company and has been very popular with travelers. Today, the company has booked more than $200 million in revenue and carried several million passengers. In fact, the company has transformed the way that European travelers perceive rail travel, and the Navitaire Rail system has been at the heart of this transformation. From providing fast and easy booking, to enabling customers to create their own personalized experiences, to empowering employees to more easily provide high-quality service, Navitaire Rail helps the railway deliver what it takes to win the loyalty of today’s more demanding consumers. Such loyalty will be critical to the company’s continued competition with low-cost airlines, as well as with emerging EU rail entrants in newly deregulated long-distance rail markets. And the advances continue. The company has added 10 new trains to its fleet and a variety of new services based on Navitaire Rail — including a SmartWatch customer application and iPhone and Android applications for virtual ticketing and customer relationship management. According to a company executive, Navitaire has been instrumental in enabling it to achieve its goals — and to build a platform to accommodate future growth. “In the coming years, competition for travelers is only going to increase, so we must constantly innovate to differentiate ourselves and strengthen customer loyalty,” the executive said. “Navitaire Rail is critical to our ability to do that and provide the service and experience that customers want and that keeps them coming back.” www.navitaire.com 5 Navitaire delivers industry-leading technology services that help enable growth, profitability and innovation to more than 50 airlines and rail companies worldwide, including many of the world’s most successful airlines. Navitaire offers a full suite of proven solutions to help clients grow their business, reduce costs, capture new revenue sources and readily connect with digital customers and business partners. Suite 1700 333 South Seventh Street Minneapolis, MN 55402-2443 USA +1.612.317.7000 phone 877.216.6787 USA toll-free www.navitaire.com [email protected] Copyright © 2016 Navitaire LLC An Amadeus company. All rights reserved. Navitaire and its logo are trademarks of Navitaire. 0616