A European Rail Company sought to automate their fleet of revenue protection officers’ work to speed up the customer experience while introducing optimal efficiency into the back-office processes in a secure environment. It went to tender to source a digitalisation partner, in order to gain better visibility on information captured by revenue protection officers. The aim was to improve, structure and organize fines for 100% validity before issuance. This rail company chose to entrust this project to digital, software experts Theta.
The customer is the transport operator of the national railway network of a Northern Europe country. It operates all internal InterCity, Commuter, DART and freight railway services in the Republic of Ireland, and the Enterprise service between Dublin and Belfast. In 2019, the customer carried 50 million passengers. Hence the importance of the digitalizing revenue protection systems.
Challenges
- ● Error prone manual revenue protection processes
- ● Paper fines
- ● Inefficient reporting
- ● Significant leakages of lost revenue
Challenges
Results with Theta
- ● Cost Savings: Through automation, the company is now able to track and report on FPNs issued – saving millions of euros per year in otherwise lost revenue
- ● Time efficiencies: Digitalisation of Fixed Payment Notices (FPN) moving away from paper and inefficient back-office procedures
- ● Secure Reporting: the company’s back-end system – Dovetail, can now stock and report on all FPNs – indispensable in the event of litigations. Fines not paid within the legal limit of 21 days can now be chased
- ● Fewer Capture Errors: The automation allows to reduce errors and to ensure that FPNs and the necessary information is captured for payment or legal follow-up
THE APPLICATION DEVELOPED BY THETA
Theta’s digital and application software expertise enabled the digitalizing revenue protection systems. This creation of a user friendly environment is used by the company’s agents on a daily basis.
- ● Consulting: Theta advised on the overall hardware/software solution, designed & built the software on the open Android operating system integrated on the FX 205 devices provided by Famoco.
- ● Development: The creation of user-friendly mobile device that scans and validates tickets enabling Revenue Protection Officers (RPO) to capture all information in record time.
- ● Benefit: Enables passengers to sign for fines
- ● Response to customer need: Incomplete fines cannot be issued - leaving no room for error or challenge from the fined traveller.
- ● In addition: The application also has the ability to connect 3rd parties through API
END TO END DELIVERY
Theta customized all back-end requirements while ensuring the front end’s usability. Partnering with Famoco for hardware, our two combined expertise led to complete end to end solutions responding to the organization’s specific needs:
Famoco
hardware
- ● Hardware configuration: FX205 light and robust, enterprise user friendly mobile device for ticket validation
- ● Full system set up (SaaS)
- ● MDM: Device servicing, and version delivery Automatic deployment of new application versions
- ● Bluetooth printers: Theta developed custom NFC tags to automate pairing and seamless connection to the FX205
Software
- ● Intuitive application to seamlessly manage the issuance of an FPN end to end
- ● Administration tool to manage configurations, data and reporting on activities
- ● Cloud based access management and authentication
- ● Quick and secure printing for FPN receipts
- ● Support for many ticketing types: Barcode QR code
- ● Ability to accept all virtual and plastic travel cards
- ● Payment gateway options
- ● Integrations with AutoAddress for local address check, NTA leap card application Payment and admin backend systems-
- ● Offline synchronization of issued tickets FPNs are synchronized with the company's back-end system provided by Dovetail, even if those tickets are issued offline
Service
& Delivery
- ● Service delivery of hardware and software installation
- ● Toll-free helpdesk and end user support adapted to the business' office hours
- ● Self healing hosting infrastructure with 0% downtime
- ● System monitoring support and maintenance
FIRST LEVEL SUPPORT
Theta guarantees a follow-up of this digitization revenue protection systems. We remain in a partnership with this European Rail Company by providing first level support following the digitalization and gathering data on the efficiency gains through the new solution.
“Choosing Theta to digitalise our cumbersome revenue protection processes was the right choice! They have brought structure, clarity and efficiency to an otherwise impossible task. We have issued over 140 000 Error free FPNs each issued in under 2 mins average. The results are clearly there with significant error reduction and increased revenue protection.”, CCO of the European Rail Company
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