Phase1 Workshop16

20-10-14 Small Player Integration

Participants

• Stefan Schäfer
• John Lutz
• Mark Verhulst, Raildata
• Mahesh Batter, DB Cargo
• Petr Cervinka, CD Cargo
• Hannes Lutz, XRail
• Younes Ougerzi, VLFI
• Frank Kschonzak, Captrain DE
• Lori Paquet, CFL

Minutes

• Small players are categorized as those who are not currently connected to the existing platforms. The category that will be addressed today are those who have limited IT capabilities. 
• In discussing the needs for integration, coverage is important for the smaller players - and data quality was good enough for national traffic. Data quality is a problem, however for international traffic. For small players, national transportation is more important. Coverage is more important for the small players. It was also noted that if a small RU has limited IT capabilities, functionality would be the most important. The experience from the German initiative, commercial issues need to be addressed.
• The focus should be on how do we make our services more attractive to smaller players? 
  • A lesson is that the CEOs for small players need to see the business case and economic benefits. Some of the needs identified are: 1) low cost, 2) coverage, 3) a solid business case, 4) a stable authorisation concept for data security and confidentiality, 5) Functionality provided by platforms, 6) larger user community, 7) agility, 8) minimum functionality for a platform is to provide connection to the IM systems.
• Technical Integration strategies:
  • Need to automate data exchange to provide information connectivity to platforms.
  • Mobile apps should be used as the small players, as they do not have the resources to input and transmit information.
  • Web applications that can be accessed by mobile or browser.
  • Need to be service-oriented. Look at what the big players have already established. 
  • System needs to capture the data only once in the field, and be able to transmit the data to all necessary stakeholders in the ecosystem.
  •  Try to capture documents i.e. PDF
• Capabilities (see slides 9-12) Specific comments below:
  • Consignment Notes: Smaller RUs find that Consignment Notes are difficult to support and an easy to use tool would be a good initiative. A centralised initiative developed under one platform would provide economies of scale as well as better data quality.
  • Train Operations: Raildata is developing a mobile application that will be able to provide operational messaging including trace and track. 
  • Hermes 30: Raildata is developing this for this capability under the WDI. From the small player perspective, there is a need to simplify the process to map to different messages, (i.e. TCM) instead of just the H30.
  • Wagon Technical Data: Find out more information about the GCU Broker project and comment into the capabilities spreadsheet. 
  • Path Requests and Coding translation: It was noted that most small players operate domestically and not international. they have already established connections with their IM, then they do not need path coordination and translation of CRD codes (they use the national IM coding.) bThe capabilities are not a top a priority for smaller players. 
  • General Comments: In general, they would like to see some of the commercial processes (such as booking, etc.) ranked higher. It was pointed out that these capabilities are based on bottom-up capabilities. All are encouraged to send comments on smart services.

Decisions/Actions

• Contact GCU for further information on the wagon technical data capabilities.
• Update slides to add mobile applications to the needs
• Small players to provide input for smart services
• Discuss with smaller RUs that have no IT on a bi-lateral basis to get their input.