Customer centricity for London’s public transport

EU Infrastructure speaks to Phil Pavitt, Group CIO at Transport for London, about his number one aim: to make the traveller top priority.

“The 2012 Olympics are affecting anybody who works on London, both in the public and in the private sector”
-Phil Pavitt, Transport for London

Since joining Transport for London (TfL) in early 2007, Phil Pavitt, Group CIO, has been one busy man. He has managed to remodel the entire information management team to become more customer centric as well as continued to tackle the huge challenges around the TfL transformation, remain cost effective and focus on new technologies.

In terms of his focus on customers, Pavitt is keen to set the scene: “Like all IT departments, it’s important to have focus, something we can really aim for. When I arrived here the IT teams were very good in themselves, but were functionally heads down, looking at what they were doing. Really getting them to look at the bigger picture was the theme of customer centricity.”

So, why was Pavitt so keen to focus on the customer? “We decided to really focus on the internal customer because they are serving the ultimate customer, the real user of our services at TfL. From there we began to move to look at the absolute user of the transport services here in London,” answers Pavitt. By showing the IT teams how they fit into the bigger picture motivated the team to work harder. Getting employees to recognise their role in the overall look and feel of what is happening and the impact on the customer has been a prime way to drive the passion among staff. “We needed to demonstrate that although your job might be to load a disk every night that goes into the system, it’s not just an activity, it has an impact on customers, it’s part of a very big jigsaw that faces the customer,” explains Pavitt.

The CIO goes on to explain that it has become a self-perpetuating process. “Over the last few months, instead of me having to ask, the team have come to me and asked to change certain issues – so they are finding customer centric issues, fixing them, or asking someone to help fix them, to remove the barrier.”

Challenges
Other than focusing his team on the notion of customer centricity, Pavitt has had some other big challenges to cope with. He sees two sets of challenges, the first being that his critical role is to harness the functional IT teams to operate as one team. “Each team were fine functioning on their own, but trying to get a pan TfL approach has been the number one strategy, getting people, technology, investment and purchasing and aligning them around a theme, in this case customer centricity,” says Pavitt.

Secondly, Pavitt has been looking at getting to the next generational leap in terms of technology. “We are well known to be looking to go to a very thin client-based solution, to use some very modern technology to really enable our staff to be mobile, to provide information to our staff that they can instantaneously provide to the customer to help them with their journey,” says Pavitt.

In order to tackle the challenges Pavitt has been addressing a strategy that he presented to the board back in September 2007 covering the next two years, up until September 2009. It included an investment programme and a benefits programme that includes a technology refresh, and has become the strategy that has been adhered to and drives the teams further, to go and deliver. “The second thing that we are looking at is working out both the cost and the services we provide to our customer and then rationing out the performance against KPI, which involves us working with our third party and ourselves to actually hit the right number.”

Real-time information
One of Pavitt’s ultimate ambitions is to provide real-time information delivery around travel schedules, delays, routes and alternatives. He believes that the major impact application that he can provide in IT terms is real-time information. Pavitt wants a customer to be on one mode of transport and then be able to decide to stay on that mode of transport or move to another one, and make that decision based on core information. TfL currently provide this data to customers through Journey Planner, which helps a customer plan a journey to multiple destinations, but Pavitt is working to get this information to the customer in a way that they can see it on the device they want to use, for example, on a mobile or a handheld, and between datasets to make a decision. “It’s probably the single biggest and most exciting technology because customers making those choices based on our data is phenomenal,” exclaims Pavitt.

However, it is also the largest challenge because all the datasets have to be harnessed using the same standards and presented in a way that does not confuse the customer, to enhance their knowledge and help them make choices. “The biggest test for us,” says Pavitt, “is when people arrive during the Olympics, for example, in an airport like London Luton, and have quite a large journey to make, and if they can do that using information that we can provide them, it will be a demonstration of their ability to make real-time decisions.” Although we are currently seeing the information provided individually, over the next 12 to 18 months trials will be performed to see real-time information on a combined basis, and depending on how the technology performs it is likely that more and more people will be brought into the process.

Pavitt also has the typical CIO ambitions, namely to make sure that the cost effectiveness of the IT provided to both internal and external users, is the best in the industry and to make sure that the total cost of ownership is better than industry standards across the world. “At the end of the day, we are the single biggest transport authority in the world, and we should have IT that really helps the customer to complete their journey well,” says Pavitt. “Our 2025 view of transport, which is a publicised policy going forward, talks about integrated transport across London, and our bit of that is to make sure the IT is integrated to support that across London.”

Exciting technologies
As well as being keen to get real-time information delivery up and running Pavitt is looking to embrace other technology around infrastructure, virtualisation and IP networks that the organisation has not really taken advantage of before. “We did not have a thin client or any real volume here for example,” says Pavitt, “But by the time we get to next February, we’ll have a pretty traditional 70 percent profile of thin client, which is a dramatic change for any authority like ours.”

Pavitt also points out that he is now employing a mobile strategy that is around a thin client mobile, which is proving very exciting. “Modernisation for the user is to enable people to do their jobs easier, to do their jobs from more than one location, and embrace the home working and flexible working abilities. We’ve also published a series of activities that we are going through to enable the rebuilding of the datacentre, the new network and the IP infrastructure behind that as well. While these technologies are well known in the market, they excite me for an organisation like TfL because of the amazing amount of productivity that will be enhanced more dramatically by IT supporting people doing their role going forward.”

2025 vision
The 2025 vision is to create a world-class transport system that delivers the safe, reliable and efficient movement of people and goods that enhances London’s economy, environment and social inclusion. Six transport strategies have been identified to achieve the 2025 objectives, they are:

• Renewing existing infrastructure – bringing assets up to a state of good repair and maintaining them in that condition.
• Ensuring the existing system is efficient and safe – improved road network management, better ticketing and information, extra security.
• Reducing the need to travel – using land use planning to reduce travel demand and car use.
• Influencing travel behaviour – providing travel information and incentives to encourage people to walk, cycle and use public transport.
• Reducing congestion and emission – a package of measures to encourage mode shift from car travel, and reduce traffic congestion and CO2 emissions.
• Providing new capacity – a major programme of investment in public transport.

Q&A
EUI. How are the impending 2012 Olympics affecting TfL?
PP. The 2012 Olympics are affecting anybody who works in London, both in the public and in the private sector. For us as an authority, and for me in particular, it desn’t have a direct impact on what we do everyday since we are providing services around the transport side. We are currently advising members of the TfL committee about what we are doing and our strategy, so we can try and dovetail that better, but the technologies that we have in place are really an enhancement on what we are already planning, helping London to be more accessible, helping us in terms of our ticket management and so on. But these are thing we intended to do anyway, so we are simply informing Olympic committees to make sure we are not working against each other in any way going forward.”

iBus system
The iBus system, another part of Pavitt’s desire for real-time information delivery, is a UK£117 million state-of-the-art automatic vehicle location and radio system that is intended to run a more reliable, consistent bus service. A major programme in the bus division, the iBus service provides both the customers on the bus and the customers waiting for the bus a wealth of information. “When you are waiting for the bus, for example, it gives you a much more accurate description of what the bus that’s coming will be and how long it will be. Whilst you are on the bus as a user in gives information in terms of routes, location, where’s next and where you are going to, and so on,” explains Pavitt. “I’m not sure how much the regular user will get from it, but certainly the people who use the bus on an infrequent basis or for the first time, it has a tremendous impact.”

The system is currently being implemented, and is being rolled out through the third parties who look after the buses. Eight buses are upgraded every single week, which means that we expect to see the service up and running completely in around 12 months time.