ÖBB Rail Cargo Group
Mobility & Logistics
ÖBB Rail Cargo Group
Digital Use Case Exploration,
Service Design,
UX & UI Design,
Digital Prototyping,
Custom Software Development
Rail transport is en route to becoming the sustainable and logistical backbone of the European economy, and ÖBB Rail Cargo Group is a key player. Operating in 18 countries, it has up to 6,000 employees running more than 1,200 trains daily. Transporting 88.4 million net tonnes per year, it is strategically vital to its holding company Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB).
“End2End digitalisation is one of the Rail Cargo Group’s most important drivers for a networked and green future of rail logistics. sclable has made an important contribution to making block train ordering more attractive for our customers, but also to ensuring a transparent and intuitive internal process for our employees.“
sclable’s goal? Ensure Rail Cargo Group achieves its digital mission: using innovation to make rail transport as digitally accessible and reliable as road transport.
Rail Cargo Group offers its customers different transport types. One of the most important ones is block train transport. It provides a perfect solution for customers with large transport volumes and a requirement for goods being shipped at the same time on the same route. This may sound simple but there are many dependencies and interactions between a multitude of departments and companies. The first challenges usually arise during the complex planning and ordering tasks. This is also the case for block trains, which is why it was selected as the pilot project.
Already ÖBB’s partner in creating digital solutions for a sustainable transport future, sclable was tasked with creating a digital solution that improves the effectiveness and efficiency of Rail Cargo Group’s blocktrain managing & ordering process.
What we achieved together
Transparency
With one source of truth, employees and customers see the same up-to-date information and communication is streamlined.
Accountability
Recorded order changes and cancellations provide action traceability and serve as basis for invoicing.
Real-time monitoring
Overview of every order allows prompt feedback, as well as proactive action and response.
Standardized workflows
Information once scattered across channels and documents now digitized in one place.
Culture shift
Digitalizing of process requires employees and customers to change ways of working - with better convenience and ease of use.
Concept development began with interviews of Rail Cargo Group employees and customers to understand their blocktrain ordering experiences. We also did Event Storming sessions with key Rail Cargo Group users to understand the current process as it exists in the organization in addition to the target process defined by management.
We learned that one challenge faced in blocktrain ordering was the lack of a digitalized and standardized workflow; different departments used different communication channels and relied on their own information sources and internal processes.
sclable’s solution was custom software as a part of the global MIKE platform solution of Rail Cargo Group, that enables high-level blocktrain order management by pulling and consolidating information into one uncomplicated, simple and flexible experience.
Implemented as a module of MIKE, customers can now create new orders, edit and cancel orders in a few clicks. At an internal level, Rail Cargo Group employees can now view, validate, confirm and cancel orders with ease.
By digitally streamlining and centralizing data and communication, the manual effort of blocktrain ordering with Rail Cargo Group is significantly reduced. With a single source of truth for the complete status of all blocktrains, customers and employees alike now have peace of mind that all orders are, in fact, in order.
The software is also prompting an important culture shift for Rail Cargo Group. Instead of information silos and inconsistent processes, interdepartmental commitment to collaborative digitization is poised to drastically improve customer satisfaction. The happier people are using rail transport as opposed to relying on the road, the more transport will shift to rail. That’s a step in the right direction for more sustainable freight transport.