This Sunday, 25th February, marks 25 years of being able to buy train tickets online in Britain.
It may not have had the spotlight of the dot.com darlings such as lastminute.com, Boo.com or Scoot, but it has stayed the course, and has become part of daily life for millions.
It is a part of the industry, and a story, that is often overlooked. Indeed, the 1000th edition of Rail Magazine recently devoted 56 pages to reviewing the changes and achievements during their 43 years in print: line closures and openings, rolling stock changes, politics, accidents, privatisation, freight, depots and the channel tunnel. However, there was no mention of the transformation the industry has gone through in how it attracts customers, and provides them with an entitlement to travel.
Online retail has transformed how customers discover, plan and pay for their journeys. Whether that is researching an important trip at home, or buying a walk-up ticket on a mobile phone the moment before jumping on a train.
Establishing and growing online rail retail has been a journey covering many areas of digital innovation. Many of these would be familiar in any e-commerce context: digital marketing, usability, design and conversion rate optimisation; vast quantities of data; integration with legacy systems not designed for the digital age; an ever evolving fraud landscape and techniques to mitigate it; the evolution from web and dial-up, to 'always on' mobile phone apps; data-centres to cloud computing; 1990s waterfall IT programme delivery, to multidisciplinary teams and continuous deployment.
The rail domain adds its own specific challenges such as journey planning and fares calculations. Not to forget the migration from posting cardboard tickets, via "ticket on departure" and "print at home", to instant delivery of barcode tickets to mobile phones.
It is a journey that has been inherently intertwined with the journey of rail privatisation, and the associated objectives, organisations, structures and people. Companies and brands have come and gone during that period, both in the realm of online retail and the industry more generally. Allegiances and rivalries have been formed, and at times there has been pretty strong commercial competition, with rivals often playing the dual role of partner. The unique governance of the rail industry makes orchestrating change and scaling innovation particularly challenging, with few people empowered to make things happened, and many empowered to stop things happening.
Strong views are sometimes expressed as to whether the retail structure of GB rail is correct, and particularly the role of commercial third parties. It is a topic often related to one’s political views, and is unlikely to gain consensus. Most of us involved over the last 25 years did not design the industry structure, we just tried to deliver the best experience to customers whilst keeping investors, Government and others sufficiently happy to let us continue.
I’ve been involved for 24 of the 25 years, and thought it was an apt time to share some insights into that journey, so I set-out to write an article. However, the length soon started to look more like a book, and a rather niche interest one at that! So I offer you a choice, a nice pretty infographic below, or if you do want to settle down with a cup-of-tea for half an hour, then read on....
Chapter 1 - The Beginning Contents
