Cubic led a team of four providers with specialist transport expertise to deliver the best solution for Irish Rail’s new fully integrated ticketing management and distribution system. The combined capabilities of Cubic and Sqills, along with its other delivery partners, CRMCulture and Rail Solutions, also meet the requirements of Irish Rail’s Customer First Programme, which puts the customer at the heart of its operation.
As system integrator Cubic Transportation Systems will lead the implementation team and oversee the project management, systems engineering and systems integration capabilities, along with the delivery of support requirements, while bus and rail sales and distribution software supplier Sqills will supply the fully integrated S3 Passenger system comprising revenue management, booking engine, seat reservation system, inventory management system, pricing engine, CRM front-end, booking office and handheld solutions
Cubic’s solution to Irish Rail’s requirements also includes CRMCulture which will configure the model bringing multiple CRM tools together, providing a uniquely functional, customer-centric solution, and Rail Solutions, part of French national rail operator SNCF, which will provide comprehensive advice and support during both the requirement’s capture and run phases to support Cubic in ensuring the solution fulfilled all Irish Rail’s objectives.
Sqills provides dynamic ticket pricing on bus and rail routes, similar to the way the airline industry matches tickets to balance supply and demand. This means customers who choose off-peak travel routes can get the best value on journey prices.
The upgrade provides a number of strategic benefits across all levels of the train operator’s business, enabling fares to be set from a single source and to update them instantly when needed across all channels. Journey intelligence will be centralised into the CRM platform, segmenting data to benefit across Irish Rail’s operations and supporting a high level of customer care.
Optimising train occupancy provides a better passenger experience and enables the sale of cheaper tickets on off-peak services, matching supply with demand.
Gerry Culligan, Irish Rail commercial director said, “Our existing ticketing systems had several dated legacy components which affect the customer experience. We were determined to bring these aspects of the business, such as ticketing and CRM tools, up to modern standards and look forward to working with Cubic’s team to achieve that.”
“The background to the ticketing upgrade was to introduce a new way of working at Irish Rail. The new system introduces flexible ways to book and process tickets so, for instance, customers can change their date and time of travel quickly and easily, and in a self-service manner, if they need to,” said Jonathan Williams, Cubic’s key account manager.
“The benefit is to encourage and incentivise more passengers to use the service through customer insight/loyalty and targeted campaigns. That, in return, leads to a greater efficiency in Irish Rail’s infrastructure and better value of delivery across the network which will ultimately lead to increased revenues for Irish Rail’s operations.”
