Deutsche Bahn, in collaboration with iteratec, has modernised its most important IT system for passenger transport. The newly developed Vendo ticketing system replaces a platform that was up to 40 years old and forms the backbone of ticket sales for passenger transport – from long-distance and local tickets to integrated fare schemes.
But how does one successfully modernise a business-critical system whilst it remains in operation? And what challenges does such a mammoth project entail?
In this interview, Ralf Gernhold, Head of IT Sales Platform at DB Fernverkehr, and Martin Schönhoff, Principal IT Consultant at iteratec, discuss the key success factors and lessons learnt during the development of Vendo.
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The modernisation of Deutsche Bahn’s sales platform was urgently needed, as the existing 40-year-old platform was no longer able to meet modern digital requirements. The various functions added over the decades, such as Bahn.de and the Navigator app, did not work seamlessly together and were therefore not user-friendly. Faced with these challenges, Deutsche Bahn was tasked with modernising its most business-critical sales system. As the platform is essential for ticket sales, this had to be carried out whilst the system remained in operation. The aim was to completely rethink both the sales process and the sales system, and to create a solution that meets the requirements of both the present and the future.
“The new system must not become outdated,” says Gernhold in an interview. Rather, it must respond flexibly to new requirements and be continuously updated. Consequently, one of the key requirements for the system was that the platform should have sufficient throughput capacity and be both high-performing and scalable. Ease of maintenance was also important, to enable updates and new features to be introduced quickly and smoothly. Furthermore, the platform needed to be capable of resolving faults efficiently in order to minimise downtime.
The implementation of Vendo was a major project, which was successfully carried out thanks to clear strategies and measures:
“Ultimately, it’s quite simple: digitalisation is driven by people – it’s all about people – and you need to ensure you have the right people on board who are keen to see a project like this through to a successful conclusion.” – Ralf Gernhold
A project of this scale always involves moments of tension. One critical decision concerned the planning of the cut-over from the old to the new system. Several scenarios were weighed up, such as the order in which the migration of the website and app should take place, and the question of whether customers should download a new app or receive an update for the old one.
Another exciting moment was the integration of the various functions and services into a unified system. This was put to the test during a trial run using the first tickets purchased via Vendo.
“We didn’t yet know whether the system we’d built would actually work. We’d never interconnected the many services – that is, the domains – before. In other words, we had no proof that we could actually carry out the entire process, from providing information and billing right through to issuing tickets and ticket inspection, via the platform within a finite time.” – Ralf Gernhold
Customers benefit from the platform’s new omnichannel framework: this means that a customer is shown the same data, tickets and information wherever they are, regardless of whether they purchased the ticket via the app, at the ticket office or from a ticket machine. Usability has been significantly simplified and unnecessary steps have been removed. Furthermore, new features are now available much more quickly, as the new system enables 30–40 releases a day. Previously, major updates could only be carried out twice a year.
Vendo has laid the foundations for a seamless digital process. Further projects are on the horizon. Digitalisation in European transport, the integration of micromobility and the transformation of travel centre processes are just some of the challenges that will be tackled in the future.
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