To offer travelers a high-quality, unique and interconnected experience
Since its launch in 1994, Eurostar has carried more than 130 million passengers from London to Brussels, Lille, Paris, and beyond, to more than 100 destinations across Europe.
As a transnational operator, unique in the European landscape, Eurostar has progressively had to cope with ferocious competition, the majority of which has come from low-cost airlines. Although these new entrants have made price their battlefield, Eurostar is able to offer travelers a high-quality, unique and interconnected experience, addressing the many needs and expectations of occasional leisure passengers, as well as extremely demanding business travelers.
An efficient, modular and competitive booking system
Continuing to develop this passenger experience – not only to respond to the increasingly specific expectations of a customer base who are used to personalization and immediacy, but also to anticipate these expectations – requires the ability to rely on an efficient, modular and competitive booking system.
Having used the Résarail inventory system (operated by SNCF, its majority shareholder) since its inception, Eurostar explored options to change this solution in 2017. The combined requirements of the solution was to reduce operating costs and provide a significantly higher level of agility in the creation of new commercial offerings.
Laurent BELLAN
CIO Eurostar
The expert skills offered by Wavestone are pretty rare in the consulting market: the firm combines its knowledge of Sqills with its ability to work closely with the software house, its expertise in rail service distribution, its detailed understanding of systems interfacing and a multicultural approach, all of which make it an ideal and trusted partner.
A balancing act
On completion of this first round of consultation, the S3 Passenger solution from Dutch software house Sqills emerged as the best option for responding effectively to the ambitions set by Eurostar.
Sqills is well known to Wavestone, having worked with the company on the launches of Ouibus and Ouigo, both of which are underpinned by the S3 Passenger solution. For both of these projects, Wavestone worked closely with the Dutch company to implement its solution and expand it in conjunction with far-reaching developments.
Wavestone and Sqills have also worked together on the balancing act required to interface one of the Ouibus and Ouigo project components with the SNCF IS. Therefore, it was a fairly natural choice for Eurostar to choose Wavestone to conduct a more detailed study of implementation methods for the Sqills solution.
This project is incredibly strategic for Eurostar, with huge risks associated with migrating such a complex booking system. The project has been in its meticulous implementation phase since March 2018, with the teams preparing the 40 project tasks identified as necessary to build the new system.
Wavestone is fulfilling an important support role for the large project team, providing day-to-day support to ensure the long-term future and success of the project. This is important because the implementation is much more than a simple IS project, and changing the booking system is driving a series of more profound transformational changes to business processes and the very culture of the company.
In this context, the expertise of Wavestone is a major asset for Eurostar at a time when the company is outlining its own future and the future passenger experience in very concrete ways.
