The year 2018 marks the occasion of a big transformation for Fret SNCF. At a time when the French government is launching the rail reform in France, with the passage of Fret SNCF into a subsidiary company, the group has just drawn up a multi-year business plan that aims to bring it to break-even within three years. The capacity management program for which Wavestone has been commissioned has now been launched.
Freight on the Road
In 2018, rail freight accounted for only 10% of total freight in France, a very small percentage overall. The ambition of the capacity management project is to resume road traffic by structurally rethinking the way Fret SNCF fills its trains.
Marc Sorrentino, Director of the capacity management programme explains:
Marc Sorrentino
Fret SNCF
Previously, we sold whole trains that had little chance of meeting our customers’ needs in terms of format, tonnage and length.
So, the challenge became to develop the use of capacity in the trains, to propose different offers to each customer with prices that are better adapted to the level of commitment expected.
An ambitious Freight Transformation Program
Although this is in fact a “production-oriented” subject, which required very thorough engineering work, Fret SNCF also had to review the valuation and quotation aspects in direct contact with the Finance and Legal Department. Not forgetting all the operational and pre-operational production aspects for which operators and sales staff had to be trained, with the creation of new IT tools to help them handle this new concept.
Jérôme Leborgne
CEO of Fret SNCF
What makes the project a success is above all the fact that we managed to design the program that manages coherence and trans-versality. And here Wavestone helped us a lot with its experience and mastery of this type of system.
“Supporting change was a key factor in the success of the program,” adds Marc Sorrentino. “Here too, we had significant help from Wavestone on certain aspects, notably our cost-pricing, which now plays a fundamental role in the way we evaluate costs and therefore prices for the client. Wavestone also played a significant role in supporting the training courses”.
First conclusive results are showing
Barely a year after the project was launched, the results are conclusive. Marc Sorrentino explains: “We are obviously very proud of the initial results of the capacity management program. We have already achieved the objectives we set ourselves, despite being very ambitious. Another year and a half, two years, and we will be able to say with certainty that we have indeed achieved all the objectives that were set at the outset”.
